


The Huntress and the Wolf

by eastsidegallery (northno3)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, F/F, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 04:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northno3/pseuds/eastsidegallery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to How to Be a Werewolf. Ty Lee leaves home on a rite of passage. Fighting her way through blood, teeth, and bullet shells, she finds that there are worse things in the dark than monsters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to How to be a Werewolf. Flavors taken from Supernatural/Grimm/Buffy.

When Ty Lee turned sixteen, there wasn't much that she wanted. Like any other girl, she had hoped for at least a small party with her friends and sisters--maybe a cake--and if she had been lucky, those gorgeous red-heeled pumps that she had been pining after for so long. Still, she knew better than to expect to be the exceptional case among seven daughters, so when her mother had hitched a moving trailer to her car and handed her a shotgun packed with rock-salt like she had with all of Ty Lee's sisters before her, she knew better than to complain about it.

Her father had been more sympathetic, hugging her and telling her to call anytime, that there was no shame in asking for help if she needed it. Her mother hadn't looked too happy when he had said that, but once all of Ty Lee's belongings were packed in the car, she had pulled her daughter aside and stuffed an envelope thick with cash into the girl's coat pocket, too stubborn to be dissuaded, and reminded her to always dress warmly.

The drive had taken three days, stopping in between at greasy diners and dumpy and rat-infested motels. When she finally arrived, she couldn't help but be disappointed. Ming Lee was hunting vampires in Budapest, Ai Lee was doing exorcisms in Tokyo, Qin Lee was tracking yetis in Nepal, and here she was ankle deep in rainwater and icy wind in a middle-of-nowhere city on the side of a mountain looking for God knows what.

Still, she was determined to be optimistic. This was her first hunt, and anything could happen if she didn't stay watchful and vigilant. She had researched this city for months before choosing it, monitored its fluctuating weather patterns, and electrical storms. All the classic signs of demonic omens were here, right down to the cattle mutilations, and so here she was. She just wished that "here" could have been a little bit more glamorous.

She found a job at a cafe with an owner who agreed to let her work in exchange for the room upstairs. She stuck the trailer in a storage facility, her rifles under a false bottom in her trunk, and tried to appear for all intents and purposes, normal. Blending in was the most important part of a young hunter's job, as her mother put it.

Getting a good education was the other part.

Her first day at the high school might have been her favorite thing so far. It was all about falling into old habits; there was something strangely comforting about the ubiquitous rows of lockers, the vapid-eyed teachers, and the perpetual smell of bleach and body odor. Her classes looked easy enough, as long as she remembered to keep up with the assignments. Everyone was nice for the most part (nicer than they were back home anyway) and she thought that she even succeeded in making a few friends. Out of nostalgia, she debated trying out for the cheerleading team (only to help her adjust, certainly not out of any selfish desire to relive any sense of normalcy she used to pretend to have), but decided that it would have to wait until she got settled.

The hardest part was making a network of information. She didn't know the first thing about finding the right people. It wasn't like she could just run around and ask people if they believed in ghosts or knew anybody whose eyes glowed eerily or had a craving for human flesh. The police scanner she brought was useless until she had a way of finding out which cases were leads and which were run-of-the-mill crimes. In the end, it came down to getting to know the town better, and that meant going to school, waiting tables, and keeping her ear to the ground.

She just wished she knew what she was looking for.

"Ty Lee, we have a table!"

"Be right there!" She called, elbow deep in soapy dishwater after hastily scrubbing off the remains of the pots and cups. The old man who ran the cafe was nice enough, and even let her do homework under the counter sometimes when there weren't any customers, but he worked her like a horse until closing. As far as she could tell, she was the only staff he had hired, so she didn't mind when he insisted that she help with the kitchen as well as the tables, even if it was getting to be a bit daunting.

"Don't forget to mention the specials." He said with an encouraging smile as she rushed by.

"Right, got it." She said buoyantly, tying on her apron, grabbing a tray of water, and hurrying around the bar.

The cafe was never busy around this time, and there were no other customers besides the one table. Small as the teahouse was, it had a appeal to its old-fashioned charm and quaint decor. Sometimes, when she let her imagination really get away from her, Ty Lee would imagine herself as a heroine in some cheesy novel, waiting for the arrival of a dark and handsome stranger to come and take her on a grand romantic adventure. It sure beat reality, the demon's trap hanging over her door, the line of salt on her windowsill, the coldness of the revolver under her pillow.

Walking up, she could hear snippets of the table's conversation, and instantly recognized its occupants as students from her school. The boy was easy enough to identify. He was an upperclassman and she had only seen him coming to and from campus. The scar running down the side of his face was rather distinctive, but didn't detract from his appearance except to lend him a sort of rugged attractiveness.

The girl under his arm was in the same year as Ty Lee's. She knew as much from a shared history class, but knew her even better for having a penchant for excessive eyeliner and hallway PDA.

The third occupant took a bit more thinking to place, until Ty Lee realized that she had seen her before in passing at the student lunchroom. If this girl ran the social pyramid, she certainly had the looks for it. Ty Lee had always prided herself on her ability to make friends easily, to be as fun-loving and easy-going as possible. It wasn't often (never) that someone took one look at her and left the room in disgust, but each school had their own nuances and so Ty Lee had chalked it up to plain cafeteria politics. She told herself that she wasn't here to make (lasting) friends anyways, and had forgotten all about it until now.

Inwardly, Ty Lee braced herself for confrontation.

None of them noticed her, each of them being so engrossed in their conversation that she was almost upon them and they hadn't looked up.

"So what does this...do, exactly?"

"Nothing. It doesn't do anything to me, and if you think I'm talking about this, you're sadly mistaken."

"Pretending it didn't happen isn't going to magically make this go away, genius."

"Oh I'm sorry, is this a game where you all give me the stupidest advice you can think of?"

"Whatever, I don't care."

Ty Lee cleared her throat, taking this as her cue to come in with her best smile, setting down the glasses of water. "Hi, welcome to the White Lotus Tearoom, my name is Ty Lee, and I'll be your server. Today, we have a great uh--" She looked discretely back to where Iroh stood behind the counter pointing at the chalkboard and giving her a thumbs-up. "A great osmanthus blend, if you would like to try that out. Have we all decided, or would you like a bit more time?"

Nobody answered her, and she could feel the smile on her face freeze as the silence grew with each second. For a frantic moment, she wondered if maybe she had something on her face. The boy was looking at her with something like disbelief, his girlfriend with mild shock. The other girl's face looked unchanged, but the knuckles in her hands had gone stark white, every lean muscle in her arms standing out in lines.

Ty Lee waited a little longer before deciding that this was officially awkward.

"I'll just come back." Ty Lee said, gesturing with the tip of her pen over her shoulder.

"You work here?" The question caught her by surprise, not just because of how rude it was, but also how loud it had been blurted. Ty Lee bristled, glaring back with as much steel as she could muster. If this girl thought that she could get to her by looking down on how she made a living, she had another thing coming.

"What Azula means is," Someone must have kicked someone else under the table because the girl suddenly looked away, studying the water droplets on her glass churlishly as her friend gave a thin smile up at Ty Lee. Looking furtively between the three girls, the boy looked like he had never had so much fun in his entire life. "We've never seen Iroh hire anyone before."

"Well, he hired me." Ty Lee clicked her pen open, trying to not feel badly. "Would you like those drinks?"

She and the boy replied that they would and Ty Lee took their orders with little difficulty. Not unsurprisingly, the younger girl appeared loathe to any more talking and took her time making her decision, her eyes fixed over Ty Lee's shoulder. When Ty Lee followed her gaze, she saw Iroh standing at his usual place behind the counter, flashing her a wide smile and another pair of thumb-ups.

"Americano." The girl said stiffly.

"I'm sorry, my boss really doesn't like making--

"Then he wouldn't keep that espresso machine." She said sharply, handing Ty Lee back the menu.

Iroh was suitably insulted, mumbling about the degeneration of today's youth, their poor manners, disrespect for fate-given gifts, and in-appreciation for what truly mattered in life. Ty Lee didn't see what the big deal was. It was only coffee. 

She managed to placate him somewhat by making the espresso herself while he busied with the teapots and biscuits. When she arrived back at the table with the tray, they were still quiet, and remained that way while she was placing down the cups and plates. It was when she started leaving that things got weird.

"So, Ty Lee, right?" The first girl smiled at her through a tight grimace, one hand holding her knee under the table as her eyes flashing angrily to the girl across from her. "I'm Mai. I think we have a class together."

"Yeah, I think we do too." Ty Lee took the offered hand civilly, even as she looked between the two girls warily.

"This is Zuko." Mai said gesturing to the boy at her side, who lifted his hand in greeting. "And this is... his sister, Azula. She’s in our year too."

There was another awkward pause as both of Azula's friends looked at their companion expectantly, each of them staring at her like they were waiting for her to jump in. The girl looked at a loss, like she was scrambling to find words. Finally, she cleared her throat politely, putting on a charming smile.

"Your hair smells nice, did you change your shampoo?"

There was a spray of tea as Zuko started choking, nearly spilling his drink as he slammed his fist onto the table repeatedly. Mai looked unfazed, pounding heartily at his back with one hand as she waved the other in flat lines across her throat at Azula. Ty Lee didn't notice, looking at the other girl in outrage.

"Excuse me?"

Azula hesitated, taking Mai's signal as an indication that she should try harder. She reached over and placed a hand over Ty Lee's, continuing with a healthy display of pompousness.

"If you like mangoes, you should come to my house. It's big and I have lots of mangoes you can enjoy there."

Next to her, Azula's brother didn't look like he was going to recover from his coughing fit anytime soon, grabbing fistfuls of napkins as tears streamed from his eyes. Mai had buried her face in her hands, her shoulders quaking silently.

Ty Lee made a clear and resolute decision at that moment to never use mango-scented shampoo ever again. "Wow," She pulled her hand away and wished powerfully for a bucket of bleach and some steel wool. "I am like, so creeped out." She muttered, turning around and walking away.

"Wait stop, I can do better--"

"Okay, we're leaving." Mai said, dropping a large bill on the table and grabbing Azula by the arm. She hauled her bodily out of the booth as Zuko followed clumsily, still holding his sides as his sister glared heatedly. "Keep the change." Mai called over the bar, the door's bell ringing wildly at their hurried departure, the door slamming behind them. Distantly, Ty Lee could hear Zuko howling with laughter.

Once they were gone, Ty Lee piled their still-warm dishes into her wash bin, unable to hide the anger in her movements. She didn't even want to touch the money Mai had left behind, dropping it off at the counter for Iroh to deal with.

"Jerks." She cursed, wiping off the table a little bit more forcefully than she needed to. Every high school had its group--the kids with money who flaunted it with their expensive cars and overpriced clothing. If they thought this would be a good way to mess with her, they were going to be horribly disappointed. She was better than this, she had more important things happening in her life than to be bothered by the high school pecking order. After she bagged herself a nice big demon, she was going to travel the world, to be someone, to save people, and be ten thousand times more important than any stuck up snob living off her daddy's money. Ty Lee was going to be a hero. 

"I see that you've met my niece and nephew."

The sound of Iroh's voice coming up next to her jarred her from her thoughts. He had been watching their interactions from afar and Ty Lee could see the hints of reassurement in his eyes as he looked at her.

"Please don't think too harshly of Azula, she hasn't had the easiest time lately." He said, appealing to her with a soft smile. He took the bin from her, holding it easily in one arm as he guided her back behind the counter and started pulling together a fresh set of ceramic dishware.

If there was one clear perk of the job, it was that Ty Lee was never in want of a hot drink. She was starting to believe that Iroh didn't think that there was a problem in the world that couldn't be solved with tea.

"You're _related_?" She blurted out incredulously, trying to put together the kind and generous old man with the snide and cruel girl that had been mocking her just moments before. "Sure could have fooled me." She allowed herself to be seated at the bar, looking out the nearby window to where Azula and her friends stood hanging around their cars. Zuko still hadn't stopped laughing, and the wry smile on Mai's face was small but visible from far away. Ty Lee couldn't hear what they were saying from inside the cafe but it was easy to read Azula's lips as the girl screamed mutely, "I’ll kill all of you!"

"She's become so good at weaving hidden lies and double meanings that now it's impossible for her to say how she really feels." He sighed, returning from the fridge with creamer and sugar syrup. Iroh was a purist when it came to tea, but grudgingly kept the necessary additions to earn the tea house a broader appeal. Precise as clockwork, he reached for the teapot just as the timer chimed. "My niece has many talents, unfortunately, relating to others is not one of them. She's going through so much right now, I'm afraid it's not going to get any easier."

"I'm sure she's very nice, usually." Ty Lee said pleasantly, taking the teacup, and stirring in the milk delicately. Out the window, Azula was climbing into her car and peeling off in a fury of roaring engine and exhaust, narrowly missing taking out a lamp post and a lady walking her dog as the car swerved away.

Ty Lee knew she had said the right thing. Iroh beamed at her and she had the strangest feeling that she had just passed some sort of test. He patted her on the shoulder and offered her a saucer of cookies, which she took appreciatively.

"So Ty Lee," He went on, his voice taking on a light tone. "How are you getting along at school? I would feel awful if I was overworking my favorite employee."

"I'm your only employee!" She laughed. She hadn't known him for very long but there was something familiar about the old man that made her to feel at home. He reminded her of her own father, and while she had never doubted the love her parents gave her, she always thought back to her family life with a little coldness. "Don't worry about me Iroh, I can handle the job." Among others things. "School is easy." 

He had never asked anything about her. He had hired her the same day she applied, no questions asked about where she had come from, or why she was living on her own. It was a generosity by itself, and being the only person in town who was kind to her lent itself certain leniencies in Ty Lee's mind, most principally, having a creepy self-absorbed psycho for a niece. It wasn't like you could pick your family--Ty Lee knew that personally.

"When you get more comfortable, don't be afraid to invite your friends over from time to time. Things can get difficult at your age; young people need good friends around to hold them up." Iroh said, lifting his teacup humorously to the window to where Zuko had Mai leaned up against his motorcycle, the young man's face bent over hers.

Ty Lee pulled a face. There was that PDA again. They seriously needed to stop that. They were each other's true love, everyone got the picture.

The sound of the bell ringing again reminded Ty Lee she still had a whole shift left to get through. She thanked Iroh for the tea, before being waved off when she tried to help clean up. She worked clear through the afternoon shift without pause, scrubbing dishes when she wasn't rushing to serve tables. By the time it was closing, she was burnt out from cleaning and the thought of starting homework made her want to tip over. After the register was closed and Iroh had said goodnight and left her the keys, Ty Lee climbed the stairs to her room with heavy-footed steps, and fell into bed with a withering sigh.

It took all her willpower to not fall asleep where she laid. A peek at the clock told her it was only seven in the evening, but she still had to get started on her reading assignments. And of course there were her other duties.

With great effort, she left the bed and turned on the police scanner, listening halfheartedly as she boiled a packet of ramen over the hot plate. She ate her dinner while flipping through her schoolwork, alternating between failing to care about organic chemistry and writing down the times and calls that came in over the air.

She had been checking the storm patterns continually since she had arrived. For a town that was giving off such strong paranormal indicators, there were surprisingly few incident reports in the papers or news. As far as she knew, there weren't even any local urban myths.

The scanner had been a clumsy last resort, and she spent more time trying to decipher the codes than actually finding anything useful. She waded through calculus formulas and the crackling calls of public intoxication and petty thievery with her cheek pressed against the top of her table. Her eyes were growing heavy and she was about to call it an early evening when someone relayed a call about a hiking accident.

It sounded like nothing; the forests surrounding the city were known for being treacherous, and hikers were getting lost or hurt on its mountains ever since the preservation had been established generations ago. Still, this was the only lead that she had all week, no matter how small it was. She debated going to bed anyways, but the thought of what her older sisters would say to her made her struggle with ambivalence. With a heavy groan, she picked herself up and said goodbye to any hopes of a restful night's sleep.

The park itself was easy to find; the forests were accessible through a single road, and from there only a small number of trails that disappeared off into the mountainside. The patrol cars were parked together around the gatehouse, their silent lights strobing beams of red and blue clear down the road. She drove past, pulling over after a respectable distance and hiding her car under the shadows of low hanging branches.

It was still drizzling; Ty Lee was beginning to think that it never stopped raining here in at least some form. It made everything wet and muddy, and that much harder to track in the darkness. Pulling her jacket hood over her head, she selected a rifle from the trunk, and silently prayed that she wouldn't find anything warranting too much excitement.

She doubled back through the brush, not bold enough to follow the road. The vegetation was thick, even being so far from where the trails started, and she fought to keep her movements quiet while hurrying as fast she could, twigs and branches snapping at her legs. She moved by moonlight, forcing her eyes to adjust in the darkness before she was too far into the thicket to get her bearings. It didn't take long to spy the glows of the patrolmen's flashlights, standing out from the trees like fingers of white. The sounds of voices and radio static reached her as she moved closer, her ears straining to hear parts of their conversation.

"...found them...animal...hours ago..."

"County coroner...little while longer..."

Ty Lee got as close as she dared, drawing the rifle across her lap as she knelt in the underbrush as carefully as she could. The group of men were huddled together under umbrellas, their faces drawn and grim in the shifting lights of their torches. They were from the sheriff’s office, the signage on their uniforms clearly discernable in glinting shapes.

“It must have been a bear, or a mountain lion.” The oldest one of them said, a grizzled officer who kept his hands tight around his thermos.

“It’s rare for them to come out this season. Could have caught them by surprise.” Another supplied, and they all nodded in response.

There was something in their voices. She had heard it a thousand times back home, watching her mother craft elegant and reasonable explanations to hospitals and law authorities. She knew it as the joining of disbelief and denial, the timeless ease in accepting a convenient lie over the trouble of a murky and impossible truth. A cold sense of trepidation gripped the base of Ty Lee’s stomach.

“Hold on, I need to…” One of them detached himself from the group, stumbling towards the trees with an arm around his stomach. He pulled off his hat, doubling over. There was the sound of splashing and the smell of bile and stale coffee. Ty Lee clapped her hands over her nose and mouth, trying not to feel sick as the young man started heaving every last drop of his stomach contents onto the forest floor.

“Jesus Christ.”

It took another hour for them to leave, all the while Ty Lee crouched in the mud and rain , feeling her muscles grow stiff and frozen cold. The coroner, having yet to arrive, was still late and the officers left to find a more accommodating place to stay. She waited for the sounds of their departure to fade into complete silence before trying to stand up and stir feeling back into her legs. Her shoes and jacket were sodden, and her clothes notwithstanding, Ty Lee knew that she only had a limited time to find the accident site before she risked catching a cold or someone found her.

She retraced the tracks of the rangers and sheriff deputies easily enough; they had moved as a singular group with no intentions to conceal their activity, and the marks of their travels stood well through the weather. She followed the line of broken grass and branches deeper into the wilderness, taking care to search for trail marks and shielding her rifle the best she could from the rain reaching through the canopy. Ty Lee didn’t know how long she had been walking, her only confidence coming from the strength of the trail and the knowledge that she hadn’t lost her direction.

She walked for a great deal longer after that. A glance at her watch revealed that it had been almost four hours since she left the tea house. The trail remained strong but now she was starting to doubt herself. There was no way it was this far out. Maybe she had missed a turn and she had been following a deer trail the entire time. The thought made her anxious and she debated turning back.

She had come across a gap in the vegetation, the trees giving away to a young meadow interspersed with outcroppings of rock. Even with a break in the forest, the moonlight penetrated thinly and couldn’t help Ty Lee’s continued feelings of claustrophobia, of all the shadows pressing in on her. The rock formations had odd silhouettes, jutting out of the grass in strange and unearthly shapes. The woods were eerily quiet here, entirely absent of the cries of insects or birds, and it made her senses stand on end. She had never in her life heard anything so silent. 

The cloud cover hadn’t improved, and it was too dark to go on. Deciding that even if she found something now she wouldn’t be able to do anything useful, she slung her rifle over her shoulder and turned to leave.

Her foot hit something hard, making her stumble and she barely caught herself in time. The smell of foulness filled her nostrils, and under her feet the ground felt soft and sticky. She scanned the field with a growing sense of unease, unsure of what she was looking for. She wouldn’t tell if it was her imagination or if the shadows really were moving, until she counted the rock formations and then recounted them again, coming up one short.

Fear overpowered sense of reason, and against her better judgment, she found her flashlight and turned it on.

It took all of her willpower not to vomit.

Strewn throughout the meadow were the missing hikers. What Ty Lee had taken for as stone formations were the scattered limbs and torsos of a dozen human bodies, their remains torn and mauled so that the masses of rotted flesh and jagged bone were indistinct from where one person had started, and another began.

The head that she had tripped over stared back at her with a single eye, its skull smashed away to expose brain matter and a long swollen purple tongue dangling from a shattered jawbone. Half of its skin was ripped away, by something with horrible strength and claws.

In her horror, Ty Lee still found sense enough to turn off the light, plunging the forest back into darkness.

Her hands automatically found her gun, flipping the safety off and reflexively sliding the bolt into place. Her mind was everywhere at once, unable to recall if she had seen anything else beside the flashes of corpses awash in blinding light. Instead, she thought of the silence that had had greeted her as soon as she entered the forest. Something had been stalking her, had followed her the whole time since she left the vicinity of the gatehouse. The same something that had chased the hikers here, herding them into the open where it had fallen upon them and set about devouring each man with ravenous hunger. Something smart and cunning.

Somewhere in this meadow, the missing shadow was watching Ty Lee.

Her ears strained for the faintest hint of sound as she fought the rising fear in her stomach. Her mother’s words came to her unbidden, reminding her to stay calm. To breathe and be patient. To think, and act.

A hunter’s greatest weapon is her wits.

She stood stock-still, listening and waiting, numb to the rain falling around her that now drenched clear through her clothes. Ty Lee closed her eyes, blind to the thing shifting in the shadows, trying to place its whereabouts. There was no use listening for it; it was a masterful hunter and predator, and difficult to track. Ty Lee had to focus on other details, like the air that smelled like putrefying meat and blood, mud--and for some reason--wet dog.

She whirled around, bringing the butt of her rifle against her shoulder and flicking on the scope light.

In response, the beast stared back at her and smiled.

Or at least, she thought it was a smile. Above a set of gleaming white fangs were ghostly blue eyes glowing emptily at her from the shadows. There might have been a growl, or maybe Ty Lee had imagined it the same way she had imagined the moving shadows and the crawling darkness. For half a second, she thought (hoped) that the abhorrent creature was just a trick of her mind, and that the tingling across her cheek had been the wind instead of the hot sickly breath from the monster's maw. But the eyes were real, and so was the razor-sharp set of jaws behind the hanging tangles of wild black hair.

In her panic, Ty Lee's finger squeezed the trigger, sending a dull crack of thunder through the woods and shattering the eerie silence. The bullet missed, slamming into the tree behind the shadowed figure, startling and sending it darting into the shrubbery.

Ty Lee cleared the shell and chambered another round with practiced motion, already in half-sprint as she did so. Without a moment’s more of hesitation, and goaded on by the adrenaline of seeing her prey fleeing, she plunged into the woods after it.

Ty Lee had always been the fastest and most agile runner she knew. It was a trait that was parented by a natural athletic ability and the gifted supernatural strength that ran through her veins. Physical effort came effortlessly to her, but here she found herself struggling to keep up as the monster moved with demonic speed, flitting from tree cover to tree cover, taking every opportunity to try to lose her through turns and deceptive terrain. Being a man-eating hellspawn certainly owed itself an advantage in mobility, but Ty Lee had been training for these chases since the day she learned how to run.

She ran for as long as she could, handedly keeping pace as her lungs burned for air and the blood roared in her ears. When they came to a cresting ridge, she made a decisive move to stop at the bottom of the hill and wait for the beast's ascent. It was a clear shot with no coverage, and she had no uncertainty about making the target.

Almost as soon as she had finished her thought, the thing accelerated. It swerved sharply to the side, as if having mentally read what Ty Lee was going to do, skirting the bullet as it climbed the ridge--and was gone.

Ty Lee dropped the rifle from her shoulder, staring at the spot where the beast had disappeared in mute astonishment. She bit her lip, trying her best to not scream in frustration, and settled for kicking a nearby tree stump instead.

She had been so close. Just one second faster, or one inch closer and she could have had it. She thought back to the meadow with grimness, where her original feeling of foreboding had given away to the thrill of the hunt once she came face to face with her target. In her mind, she was already going over how to defeat it. It was clearly a demon, but the question remained what kind, and that required study. Optimistically speaking, today was useful in that she at least had gotten a look at what she was dealing with and could identify and exorcise it within the week if she worked hard.

She slung the gun over her back again and proceeded to trace her way back out the woods. All her fresh confidence vanished as she flashed back to the grizzly scene in the grass, the poor people who had been butchered and left rotting in the open field, and in its place rose a desire to destroy the monster that had inflicted such evil. She committed every detail of the demon to memory: its massive claws, the rows of elongated fangs, the glowing blue eyes staring soullessly at her from the trees before running into the dark. 

It hadn't taken much to sent the creature running.

If Ty Lee were crazy, she would say that it had looked just as shocked as she was.

 

The next day, she was exhausted.

The first three periods were an ongoing battle to stay awake, and many times, unsuccessful. She was getting very creative with the types of angles she could tilt her head and hold her textbook so that it didn't appear obvious what she was sleeping. The prospect of finishing the rest of the day was monumentally daunting, and she wondered if Iroh would hate her very much if she asked for a coffee before work.

By the time lunch rolled around, she was feeling a little better, although not enough to eat. She kept thinking about the cadavers, and the smell of decay that seemed to have followed her out from the woods. The pile of brown and red mush on her plate that was supposed to be the cafeteria meatloaf wasn't helping her appetite by any means.

She had been up all night. Unable to sleep after the chase in the forest, she had driven out to the storage lot and spent the rest of the night locked in her mother's trailer, sifting through mountains of archaic tomes and etchings. She had narrowed it down to either a vampire or a ghoul, but the methods of vanquishing either were so particular that she had to be sure before she tried hunting it again.

She debated and then quickly threw out the idea of calling Ming Lee for advice. If she asked for help this early, she would never hear the end of it from anyone.

Letting out a sigh, she stabbed her fork into the greasy mess of her lunch and pushed the plate away from her, resting her head on her folded arms.

"You okay Ty Lee?"

She looked up and found everyone staring at her. Their faces were etched with concern and she wavered guiltily. They had been talking to her the whole time, and here she was ignoring them and being selfishly caught up in her own problems. They had opened their circle to her. The least she could do was try to be sociable.

"Sorry guys," Ty Lee said, blowing out an exaggerated breath of frustration and rolling her eyes. "I have this term paper and it's really killing me.”

Song smiled sympathetically, her face falling into relief. “I don’t know how you do it--coming in the middle of the school year and having to do all that work to catch up. It seems stressful.”

“You can borrow my chem notes if you want.” Jin said, one hand already digging through her backpack. "I saw you falling asleep in class earlier. No offense to our teacher but organic chemistry is the worst thing to start your day with."

Ty Lee thanked her, promising to return the notebook the next morning before class.

"Don't look now but I think Zuko is staring at us." Jin said incredulously with a subtle movement of her eyes towards the table behind them.

Song startled, nearly hitting her knee on the table. "What? Really?"

Ty Lee had been too distracted to notice what had been happening around her in the lunchroom, but in the reflection of her food tray, she saw the same three people that had come into the tea house that previous day. They occupied a lone table, and true to what Jin had said, Zuko was indeed staring at them.

"Interested, Song?" Jin goaded playfully.

The other girl turned away, a faint blush tinging her cheeks. "Like you can talk."

Although to Ty Lee, Zuko seemed anything except romantically interested. Her friends might have been too invested to judge for themselves, but she saw his suspicious scrutiny easily. His lips were moving, and every so often he would turn and look at Mai, who only shook her head and seemed to be trying to keep herself distanced from whatever he was trying to engage her in. She lacked the usual aloofness that Ty Lee had pegged her with when they first met. If anything, the girl seemed worried.

"He's so cool, and his scar makes him look so tough and handsome. What does he see in Mai anyways? She's so...gloomy and depressing. And boring."

Ty Lee personally felt that Zuko could have filled those last descriptions as well. She preferred more outgoing and charismatic boys, ones that had a sense of humor and knew how to have a good time and treat her well. But she wasn't about to say that aloud.

"I can't believe he has a sister like that." Song said disbelievingly. "They're so... different."

Azula was seated across the table from the other two, locked in what seemed like a heated argument with her brother. Although her body language remained relaxed, she spoke to Zuko at a vicious pace, her words appearing to only incite his temper. However whereas Zuko was just staring in their general direction, Azula was only staring at Ty Lee.

To be sure, she looked over her shoulder and found herself meeting Azula's eyes. At once, Azula's table went silent and Zuko and Mai turned hastily back to their meals. Azula, however, held her gaze.

"She's insane--like really. I was in her PE class last year and she tackled this girl and the girl went _flying_. Broke her arm in three places. In PE! Who does that?" Jin shuddered.

"A crazy person." Song supplied. "Azula."

"Crazula!" They both said together at once before falling into peals of laughter.

Across the room, Azula's eyes turned hard, bright amber flashing hotly as if she knew exactly what they were talking about, like she could hear every single word that they were saying about her. Which was absurd, given how large the cafeteria was and that their tables were almost on opposite sides of it. Ty Lee looked at her new friends and wondered if all the laughter at Azula's expense was a regular thing.

Azula--or all of the girl's arrogance and venom--sat at a lunch table with her brother and brother's girlfriend. What Iroh had said to her started to make sense. If she hadn't seen it for herself, Ty Lee wouldn't have believed that girls like Azula could be the butt of jokes for girls like Song and Jin. For all of her beauty and money, it hadn't helped Azula in the least. It made Ty Lee feel that maybe in a different life, the hierarchies would have been different.

Iroh's beseeching requests returned to her on an impulse. The old man hadn't been specific, but had said enough for Ty Lee to paint a vague picture. More than anything, it had been the remembrance of his despondency, the worrying of an old man for his niece that made Ty Lee do what she did. 

"She came into the tea house yesterday." Ty Lee said abruptly, not sure why all of a sudden she was feeling sorry for the same girl who had taunted her relentlessly at her workplace.

"Was she mean to you? She's mean to everyone." Song offered kindheartedly, looking ready to comfort her.

Ty Lee picked up her water bottle. "She was okay." She lied painfully. "She really liked what I use to style my hair." She gave a wide smile for added effect and took a deep sip of water.

Hunting demons and defending the reputation of hardened social lepers. The work of a hero was never done.

"Wow." Jin said dumbly.

Ty Lee risked another look over her shoulder, but Azula was already gone, and so were her companions. She couldn't help but relax a little. For all of the inklings of guilt she had, it didn't negate the feelings of unease that she got whenever she found Azula staring at her. It set her on edge. If this girl was going to use her as a way to vent her social failures, it would be at her own peril.

Ty Lee's thoughts were interrupted by someone calling her name.

"Hey, Ty Lee!" The three girls looked up to see a boy in a beanie, moving towards them with a thick-lensed camera around his neck. She kept forgetting his name since they weren't in the same grade, but she knew him in passing and his energy and perpetual friendliness were infectious. "I'm trying to get everyone's picture in the yearbook. Maybe I can get the new girl too?" He asked holding the camera up hopefully. She had already seen him enthusiastically snapping photos around campus all day.

"Yeah, sure!" Ty Lee replied cheerfully, pulling her friends around her with her arms, smiling as the camera flashed.

The rest of the school day passed mundanely. Ty Lee managed to get through her classes without much more sleepiness or drooling, and by mid afternoon she was feeling much better and on her second wind. By the time the last bell of the day rang, she was feeling good enough where she was starting to plan another recon trip into the forest after her work shift. The faster she dealt with this problem, the faster she would be able to get a good night's sleep.

She was getting ready to leave campus, dropping her books into her backpack when she felt eyes at her back.

Halfway down the hall, Azula was at her own locker, looking at Ty Lee through the throngs of students rushing from the doorways. Like before in the lunchroom, her gaze didn't waver, and Ty Lee held it obstinately.

Okay, this was just ridiculous.

Grabbing her book bag and closing her locker, Ty Lee pretended a grin that felt suspiciously like her work smile, pushing her way towards Azula as quickly as possible in case the other girl tried to make a run for it.

No such luck.

"Hi, Azula--"

"You must think really highly of yourself to try to start something here." The other girl had slammed her locker shut, facing Ty Lee with her shoulders set. The way she stood with her feet apart instinctively raised the young hunter's hackles. If she didn't know any better, it was like Azula was expecting to be physically assaulted.

Okay. "Well I was _thinking_ that we didn't get off to a great start. You've been staring at me all day," Ty Lee said slowly for greater emphasis. Azula had been talking to her in hushed tones, and Ty Lee had followed suit. She might have been standing too close, as Azula stiffened considerably. Hastily, she stepped back to give the girl more breathing room, and the tension appeared to lessen.

"And I thought maybe you wanted to say something to me. Like you know, in case you wanted to apologize."

"Apologize for what exactly?" Azula's eyes narrowed, waiting carefully for Ty Lee's response.

_For being rude and weird. For staring at me like I'm a piece of meat and being a creeper._

Ty Lee wanted to say all of that, but Azula's expression told her that the girl's inquiry had been real. She honestly didn't know what Ty Lee was talking about.

They stared at each other, baffled.

"This was a bad idea." Ty Lee decided aloud, turning away, absolutely mystified as to how anyone so pretty could be so awkward. Inwardly, she was already apologizing to Iroh for having failed so quickly and miserably to befriend his niece, but the old man was on his own now. Ty Lee was a demon slaying hero, not some miracle worker.

A hand took her by the elbow before she got too far.

"No, wait." Azula looked at war with herself, like the next words caused her physical pain to say. Her apology came out like a grimace. "I'm sorry."

Ty Lee smiled, glad that they were willing to at least meet each other halfway.

"For saying that you smelled nice." The girl finished petulantly.

Around them, other students were reveling in the end of the school day. They gathered in large flocks noisily, rushing to their clubs or to the parking lot with their friends. Their boisterous conversations cut through the silence that settled over Azula and Ty Lee uncomfortably. Distantly, Ty Lee heard the flashing of a camera.

"Maybe we should just start over." Ty Lee suggested, taking the book bag from her arm and leaving it on the ground. She held her hand out promptly, doing her best to make the greeting sincere. "Hi, I'm Ty Lee."

Azula looked at the proffered hand indignantly, like she couldn't be bothered with silly pretense. The moment hovered, and Ty Lee thought that the girl was going to blow her off before Azula eventually took it. Her grip was firm, but surprisingly soft, even with the French manicure. "Azula." She said tersely.

"Azula." Ty Lee repeated, smiling brightly. "That's a really pretty name." She had thought so ever since the initial introduction from Mai at the tea house, but now that they were trying to be civil with each other, she didn't mind saying so.

Azula shrugged offhandedly. "I know."

Ty Lee smiled, wondering what it was like to have such self-assurance undaunted in the face of beleaguering school gossip.

"How was your day?" She continued congenially without missing a beat.

"Acceptable." The other girl paused, considering Ty Lee with a flickering glance. "I was up all night with... work."

"Oh, me too!" Ty Lee blurted out, excited to find out that they had something in common, even more surprised that someone like Azula would need to pick up a part-time job. That was until Azula looked at her suspiciously, and Ty Lee remembered that their shop didn't run past evening.

"Uh, I mean tea, you know. Tea stains take forever to get out. Hours." Ty Lee winced, thinking about the gore and bone marrow that had stuck to her shoes when she got home and the fervent scrubbing it had taken to get them clean again. As if sensing her guilt, Azula's eyes dropped to Ty Lee's shuffling feet. "So where do you work?" Ty Lee asked quickly.

Azula ignored Ty Lee's question like she hadn't heard it. "If Uncle works you too hard, all you have to do is tell me." 

"Oh that's nice of you," Ty Lee's mother had always been hard on her when it came to her work ethic, reminding her as often as she could that Ty Lee was the most inept out of all her sisters when it came to hunting. This first hunt was more than just a rite of passage, it was a chance for her family to finally start taking her seriously. Ty Lee could handle a couple dirty plates and tables in the meantime. "But it's my job and I should probably try for like, at least a _few_ weeks before I start waving the white flag."

Azula looked pleased with her answer, and Ty Lee felt that she had somehow earned a little of the girl's respect. Still, she kept her usual detached air of conceit when she said, "How anyone could stand working in that miserable old dump is beyond me."

Ty Lee balked. "I kind of like it." Sure, it wasn't the most classy or modern tea house in town, but it had its own rustic charm. Ty Lee greatly preferred its homely and comforting warmth to any fancy coffeehouse full of self-important yuppies.

Azula rolled her eyes. "Please. Uncle made it so that he would have a place to grow old and die. That place is just as sad and pathetic as he is."

"I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to live out your life." She replied resentfully. Kids like Azula had always taken for granted the things that were so freely given to them, the things Ty Lee would never have.

Azula made a derisive sound, letting Ty Lee know exactly how she felt about her opinion. "Maybe not if all you've done in your life was be a useless failure."

"Iroh's great." Ty Lee protested ferociously. Her annoyance was climbing at an alarming pace towards Azula's lack of respect for someone who so clearly cared about her. "He's nice and kind and generous."

Azula seemed to feel sorry for her and wasn’t afraid to show it. "You don't know what you're talking about." She stated impersonally, like she knew Ty Lee's ignorance wasn't her fault. She breezed on like it didn't even bother her.

"Trust me, he's just a disgusting, washed up old man and you're better off not being around him. If you want a better job, you can come work for me. Our house is so much better than any run down broom closet you're living in. And I'm sure my father can give you a nice and easy job like, I don't know, cleaning the pool--"

"Oh my God, you're heartless." Ty Lee muttered in disbelief, picking her backpack up and putting it over her shoulder. She berated herself for even wasting her time. She should have known that this would be a stupid idea. “This was a mistake. I knew there was no way Iroh was right.”

Azula's surprise quickly melted into a matching ire, looking at the other girl incomprehensibly . "You're angry about my _uncle_?"

"He's worried about you, you know. He's so worried about whatever it is that he said you were going through. I don't know why he even bothers because obviously you don't care about anyone but yourself." Ty Lee said harshly, unable to maintain her modicum of restraint that been the pillar of this conversation.

“You don’t know anything about me or my family.” Azula stated darkly, her voice taking on a dangerous tone.

“I know that Iroh has a spoiled little princess for a niece.”

"If you love my uncle so much why don't you just go sleep with--"

"Yearbook, smile!" 

There was a bright flash that blinded them both, washing Ty Lee’s vision into white light and dancing spots. The boy from the yearbook popped up, smiling cheerfully with his camera still held out in front of him, as he looked between the two girls expectantly. Ty Lee stared at him, bewildered.

“Do you guys wanna do another--”

“What part of ‘no pictures’ do you not understand?” Azula’s face twisted into a snarl as she grabbed the freshman by the neck of his shirt and shoved him bodily out of her way. The push must have been harder than it looked as it sent him crashing into the lockers, tumbling to the ground and scrambling to find his camera.

Pushing Ty Lee aside with her shoulder, the girl stormed past them and the crowd of students that had paused to see what the noise had been. They were left standing, staring at the empty clanging doors where Azula had disappeared and back to where Ty Lee was helping the boy up from where he had fallen. Disappointed that there wasn’t any spectacle to be had, they dispersed quickly, leaving the two to recover by themselves.

“Wow, she _really_ didn’t want her picture taken.” Aang said peevishly, with a hand to his head and a look out the door to where Azula had escaped.

“I’m sorry.” Ty Lee said sincerely, handing back the fallen camera. “I made her mad earlier and I think she took it out on you.”

“Zuko has been complaining about her a lot more recently.” The young boy said thoughtfully with a tinge of irony. “Azula’s usually the more put together one.”

“What’s her _problem_?” Ty Lee wondered out loud in bewilderment.

“Beats me.” Aang shrugged, inspecting his camera with a frown. He put his eye to the viewfinder and tapped fervidly at the screen. “Well, it’s not like I can use this anyway, the lighting’s all weird. Check it out.” He tilted the screen for demonstration. “Creepy, huh?”

Even before Aang held the camera up for her to see, a part of Ty Lee already knew what the boy was referring to. Deep down, it didn’t surprised her. Everything clicked into place after that, the sudden mood changes that everyone had told her about, the absurd strength that defied Azula’s stature, the way Ty Lee’s instincts had been screaming at her incessantly whenever she had felt Azula watching her. She should have figured this out from the beginning.

Looking at the photo, she felt a familiar chill run down her spine.

Aang’s picture had captured them mid-motion, and contrary to the boy’s opinion, the lighting was unremarkable. In the camera flash, she could see herself looking at the other girl in outrage as Azula had twisted to reach for Aang’s camera a mere second before the shutter had gone off. Between the outstretched slender fingers, the eerie blue glow was unmistakable. Looking back at Ty Lee from the camera screen were the same empty eyes that had haunted her in the forest, the same voracious stare that had hunted her through the trees and stalked her amongst the half-eaten corpses. It shook her to her very core, but more than that, it filled her with a renewed sense of purpose.

In her excitement, Ty Lee grabbed Aang’s camera with both hands, barely keeping herself from screaming with vindication.

“I _knew_ it!”


	2. Late Night Gymnopaedia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ty Lee finds the thing that's been killing and eating humans, and tries to come to terms with what Azula might be.

It was funny how with one piece, all the others clicked into place. Looking back, Ty Lee now saw all the signs that she had missed before. She had allowed her biases to get the better of her, never expecting for the thing she had been hunting to be hiding in plain sight (in a high school student) all along, and so she hadn't seen the girl for what she was. A hunter had to trust her instincts, which she was now learning to her chagrin.

Azula was a demon.

Or rather, she was being possessed by one.

Iroh was surprisingly accommodating with her abrupt questions when she came in for work that day. In fact, he seemed overly pleased with her sudden interest in Azula, even when Ty Lee asked about odd things like her living and sleeping patterns, if Azula had ever acted that strangely around anyone else, and where she liked to spend her time after school. He accepted her flat excuses with little issue, laughing and saying Azula wasn't anymore violent than she was before, mentioning in passing how the most of Azula's change had started a little after Ty Lee had moved into town.

Ty Lee had nodded solemnly when she heard that. It seemed that she had arrived just in the nick of time; any longer and the results would have been disastrous. She hadn't pegged down the kind of demon it was yet, but that would require more research and research required time. Time that Azula didn't have. In the end, it looked like Ty Lee would have to improvise.

If she acted fast, she could still save the girl's life. 

Work was torture. She waited anxiously for the shop to close, all the while glancing impatiently at the clock, chasing orders and washing dishes. Her shift seemed to stretch on forever, and she worked in an absent-minded drive, her mind trying to recall all the things Ai Lee had been drilling into her since she was nine. She groaned inwardly when she realized how little she actually remembered, all of a sudden regretting the times she had neglected her studies in favor of late-night parties and dates.

"And they say kids your generation have no work ethic." Iroh remarked, impressed as she walked by balancing a monstrous tray stacked high with plates with unfailing ease. "It's like watching a circus juggler." He chuckled to himself, laying out three tea sets on the counter which were picked up simultaneously.

Despite her lack of sleep the day before, Ty Lee was on pins and needles all the way until evening. She was afraid she bordered on rudeness a few times with how persistent she was following up on tables, but whenever she looked over at Iroh, he only shared a grin. She smiled back awkwardly each time, trying her best to appear casual. It was like he imagined he knew something that she didn't.

As soon as the tea house had been cleaned and he was out the door, Ty Lee scrambled up the stairs in a maddening flurry. She pulled off her apron and uniform in the doorway, dressing hurriedly with whatever suitable thing she found first from her closet. She packed as fast as she could without being careless, strapping thin blades to her ankles and wrists, the revolver against her hip, and methodically counting off her mental checklist with the contents of her satchel. Reaching under her bed, she lifted the loose floorboard and pulled out the shotgun.

Iroh had mentioned that Azula rarely spent her evenings at her house, and Ty Lee had guessed as much. Demons who possessed their hosts for extended periods of time needed to feed with increasing intervals, whether upon souls or flesh. From last night, it was easy to tell that the demon had been feeding for some time.

It wasn't raining anymore by the time she had driven back out to the park reserve. She stood at the foot of the trail, staring out into the sky and searching its expanse for the receding clouds. The moon shone above her in luminous glows touching each contour of the valley, lighting the shadows that had been so disquieting and plagued relentlessly on her last hunt. She wouldn't be at the same disadvantage this time, but thinking about what stood in front of her--what she might have to do--made her grip on the gun tighten. She tried to turn aside the doubt in her mind, to not think about what it would come down to if she failed to exorcise the demon. A hunter's will would be tested repeatedly during her rite, and she had to remain focused lest it cost her more lives than those already lost.

Remembering the dead hikers made her sick, and beset her with guilt. If she had only paid more attention, spent her first week scouring the town for information instead of worrying over stupid things like school, maybe she might have saved their lives. Her head told her that there was no use worrying about things long gone, and that the important thing was to remain focused on the job. The worst thing she could do now was get ahead of herself.

Still, it didn't make her feel any better.

She remembered the girl's imperious smile, the way their hands had clasped for a brief moment in the school hallway--that had for all impressions, been so refreshingly honest and human. There had been something behind Azula's stare, something she hadn't place before, screaming beneath the gloss of pretended normalities, desperate and rapacious. Ty Lee had judged her too harshly, and for that the poor girl's cry for help had gone unheeded.

She wondered what Azula (the real Azula) was like--the girl without the savage beast living in her skin--what kind of girl she really was, if she had any sort of heart-felt ambitions, if maybe they were the type to have been friends. It should have been her first clue that there was no way for a girl like Azula to behave so cruelly and strange. Ty Lee resolved then that no matter, she would find out and give back all the things that the demon had wrongfully taken away.

Finding the previous trail was easy in the moonlight and she retraced her path to the meadow in almost half the time it had taken to find it in the rain and dark. Breaking through into the clearing, she let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding when she saw the empty field. The bodies were gone, long been retrieved by the coroner and sheriffs, and the blood and dark patches in the grass had been washed away in the rain. It was as if the violence that she had witnessed the night before had never existed at all, a figment of some horror in her mind.

Further on, she found the bullet hole she had left in the tree trunk. From there, finding the course of her abandoned chase was easy, the evidence of the pursuit showing in the crushed foliage, upturned earth, and broken branches. In the absence of human corpses and overwhelming darkness, the woods lacked the same oppression that it had before, and her confidence returned in droves.

She came back upon the steep embankment where she had lost the chase, scaling over the rocky ridges carefully on her hands and knees. Up here, the terrain shifted into the foothills of the mountains, the thickness of the trees giving away slightly so that shrubs and bushes dominated the woods. The earth was pebbly, and the mountains climbed on in jagged sheer faces of granite.

She found a blood trail with her flashlight, its smell and darkened color telling her that it was already several days old. The hikers might have been butchered in the valley, but parts of them had been dragged up into the surrounding mountainside, signs of their passing littering the floor in smears of black and brown. The patterns of their massacre continued on into the cover of spruce trees, and Ty Lee followed with care, mistrustful of every errant shadow, every noise from twigs and leaves shaking in the wind. She searched attentively, half-expectant of white jaws and a hungry smile behind each turn, mindful of how fast the demon had materialized from thin air.

The cave sat nestled behind dense growths of brush, half-concealed in moss and vines. Its cavernous maw gaped back at her through where she knelt in the undergrowth, its depths impenetrable by moonlight and darker than any shadow of the wood. Ty Lee took a deep breath, checking the magazine port one last time. 

Somewhere inside, Azula was waiting.

Something heavy dropped to the forest floor behind her.

"Don't go in there."

Ty Lee pivoted on the balls of her feet, instinctively chugging the gun's forearm as she pointed the barrel and pulled the trigger.

The shotgun blast punched Azula square in the chest, slamming the girl off her feet and sending her flat on her back in the bushes. Ty Lee's body snapped into action, abandoning the gun and leaping on top of the other girl, using her knees to pin Azula's hips down. Inwardly, Ty Lee was dizzy with exhilaration, goaded on by how easy it had been when she had originally anticipated hours of waiting and biding her time.

Azula writhed underneath her, gasping for breath as her eyes dropped to the tattered mess of cloth on her chest, the redness bleeding over her tattered clothes. "You shot me!" Her wheeze turned into a pained grimace, looking back between her ruined shirt and the girl straddling her waist, her face twisting with fast climbing rage. "You idiot, you shot me!" 

"I know what you are!" Ty Lee said decidedly with her hands gripped around Azula's throat. To the demon's credit, it didn't even look fazed with the death hold around her neck, staring up at her in complete incomprehension. "You can't fool me! That's pure, unadulterated rock salt! It burns like hell to your kind!"

Azula looked at her in ardent outrage. "Or it burns because it's _salt_ , you stupid--!"

Ty Lee finally found her canteen with one hand, her thumb fumbling to pull off the cap before upending it over Azula's head. The other girl sputtered, sending even more holy water over both of them as she shoved Ty Lee's hands away. Ty Lee responded by pinning the other girl's arms above her head and plugging the mouth of the canteen to Azula's lips, holding it there as it emptied down the demon's throat.

"Don't worry, Azula, I'm going to save you!" Ty Lee declared earnestly over the girl's coughing and protests (now silenced by incessant choking.) She pulled the rosary from around her neck and dangled the crucifix above the demon's head. "Hang in there!"

"What are you, a moron?” Azula shrieked lividly. Now that the canteen was gone, there was nothing to stall the tide of enraged fury. “What are you _doing_?” The water had made her hair cling around her face in limp tangles, and gave her a pathetic appearance not dissimilar to a wet cat.

"Yeah, that's not going to work on me." Ty Lee crowed victoriously. She had prepared for this; she had been present for too many of Ai Lee’s exorcisms to not know how demons operated with deceit. “I’m too smart for your tricks, demon!”

“I’m not a demon!” Azula said, visibly disgusted by the notion of something so preposterous. She spoke viciously and slowly, as if she hoped that by speaking deliberately it would somehow make Ty Lee understand. “I’m a--” She broke off halfway, her head turning to the side as her eyes fixed to the surrounding trees and shrubbery. She froze, and Ty Lee could feel every muscle in the girl’s body tense underneath her thighs. The explanation never came, and Ty Lee waited in vain as Azula seemed to have forgotten her entirely.

“You’re a _what_?” Ty Lee prompted impatiently, her hand sitting at the butt of her revolver.

“Shut up.” Azula replied sharply under her breath. Her eyes had grown distant, like she was straining to hear something far away, but when Ty Lee followed suit all she heard was silence. Beneath her fingertips she could feel Azula’s pulse, and how her breathing deepened and slowed, the girl’s nostrils flaring slightly as if she was trying to look for a smell.

Ty Lee spared a flashing glance to the empty trees and bushes, seeing nothing except the leaves moving faintly in the breeze. All she could smell was the remnants of rain and mud.

“Uhm, hello?” Ty Lee waved a hand in front of Azula’s glazed eyes, thoroughly fed up with the continued evasiveness. “I don’t think you appreciate the situation you’re in.” She said huffily.

“Really, shut up.” Azula snapped, harsher than before.

Ty Lee scoffed in reply. Distraction was the oldest trick in the book. She had tracked Azula all the way up these mountains and if there had been anything else with them, she would have noticed. Every cell of her body was tuned in to the forest, all her senses stretching out to feel beyond the edges of her field of vision. If something had been stalking them, Ty Lee’s hunter instincts would have kicked in a long time ago.

She rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing out there--”

The branches crackled behind her and she heard the guttural snarl coming from behind her too late. From her mounted position, it was impossible to escape. On a reflex, she ducked, holding Azula to the ground again as the air above them whistled with deadly purpose.

Whatever it was had shot by them at incredible, inhuman speed. Ty Lee could hear it hitting the ground, the sound of shredding foliage and roots ripping from the earth deafened by the infuriated roar rolling down her back in reverberations. With her face pressed so close to Azula’s, Ty Lee hardly had time to register the girl’s smirk of triumph, and her own amazement as the deceptively slender body beneath hers lifted her up with frightening ease.

Azula launched her through the air like she weighed nothing, and Ty Lee was airborne just long enough to suspect that maybe Azula had been telling the truth all along.

She turned and tucked into a roll, landing on her feet with revolver drawn in one hand and a knife in the other. Whirling around to find the monster, she looked on, dumbfounded as Azula stood locked in combat with the freakish behemoth that had just seconds ago tried to take her head off. Even standing so close to it, Ty Lee had no idea what it was. Emaciated, and ghoulishly long-limbed, it looked like a walking corpse if not for the elongated talons and thin sharp teeth that gnashed from a lip-less mouth. Blood and slobber dribbled from its jaws, and Azula strained valiantly to keep its stringy drivel from getting into her already-ruined hair. She pulled a disgusted face as the drool landed on her shoes instead.

“Don’t just stand there!” Azula shouted irately, her hand firmly gripping that base of the monster’s antlers to keep it from goring her. “ _Kill_ it!”

Not needing anymore encouragement, Ty Lee lifted the gun, setting the hammer and squeezing the trigger. The first bullet found the thing’s forehead, just inches from Azula’s thumb, and the next buried itself in the fiend’s neck. The monster didn’t so much as flinch, struggling furiously against Azula’s grappling as it gamely kept on trying to devour the girl’s face. In her frantic alarm, Ty Lee continued to empty the entire cylinder into the thing’s body, each shot only seeming to anger the monster even more.

“What are you doing?” Azula looked at her in outrage, ducking a rakeful of claws. “Stop fooling around, idiot!” 

“Does it look like I’m fooling around?” Ty Lee shot back shrilly, dropping to her knees and patting the ground to find the discarded shotgun. Her hands swam through petals of dead leaves and dirt before closing around the familiar stock of the gun butt, her momentary glimmer of hope vaporizing when she realized that she hadn’t brought anything except shells of rock salt.

“It’s a wendigo!” The other girl replied hotly as if that explained everything. “It’s not that hard!” 

Right. Wendigos.

Ty Lee briefly wondered why that thought had never occurred to her before, her mind rifling through all the encyclopedic data about spirits and manitous her parents had crammed her head with. Watching Azula fight the wendigo with unflinching decidedness made Ty Lee panic when she remained unable to recall the endless lessons that were supposed to be coming to her automatically. She looked helplessly between the grotesque monsters and the girl who stared back expectantly.

“Uh.” Ty Lee cocked her elbow back and threw the knife with lethal dexterity, burying it up to its hilt in the eye socket of the wendigo. 

The abomination screamed, striking blindly with renewed strength in its fury. A wild blow caught Azula across her face, staggering the young girl and throwing her from the clinch, leaving thick lines of blooming red across her cheek. Unshaken, Azula looked furious, visibility seething as she recovered and surged forward at lightning speed. She evaded the next attack like it was child's play, slipping out of range of the razor-sharp claws before ducking in and wrapping her fist around the knife handle protruding from its skull. The blade came free with a wet sucking noise, accompanied by an ear-splitting screech that only grew higher when the girl leapt the fiend's monstrous shoulders and took hold of its neck in a brutal choke.

The sound of rending flesh and snapping bone cut through the gut churning wail. Ty Lee stared speechlessly as the enormous corpse collapsed to the floor, Azula already on her feet and holding the head aloft by its antlers. Blood streamed from the stump, dribbling down and leaving dark trailing webs in the ground near the girl's feet as she walked up to where Ty Lee knelt in the dirt. The was an unabashed aura of gloating as the head was dropped in front of the flabbergasted hunter, the knife quivering on its point in the mud near Ty Lee's knee.

Ty Lee’s mouth closed with an audible click.

"I would burn this if I were you." Azula said vindictively, rolling the wendigo's head under her foot. "They have a nasty habit of coming back to life." The snideness of her voice said that she still hadn't forgiven Ty Lee for the incident with the shotgun, and now Ty Lee owed her double after having just saved her life. "Are you going to put that away or are you planning on shooting me again?" She sneered.

Ty Lee didn't know what to say. After the display of sheer power and effortless violence, it was difficult to believe that Azula wasn't a threat, but after having struggled so fiercely against the monster, it was equally harder to believe that Azula was an enemy.

She wasn't even so much as aggravated anymore from the rock salt that had torn open the skin on her chest. In her exertion against the wendigo, the frayed shreds of Azula’s shirt had fallen open so that Ty Lee could see the perforated wounds on the girl’s sternum, now streaming with fresh blood. The gashes cutting down Azula's face and neck left weeping rivulets of crimson running down her skin, but the girl hardly seemed to notice them. Having looked to recover her breath from the shotgun blast, Azula moved like she didn't feel the injuries at all.

Ty Lee looked back to the decapitated head under Azula's shoe. The girl had beheaded the wendigo with the skinny throwing knife like the beast’s neck had been made from warm butter.

They stared at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move.

After a short while, Azula rolled her eyes in exasperation, hesitating as she opened her mouth and looked to say something.

Somewhere in the forest, a wolf howled. It was distant enough where Ty Lee barely heard it, floating over them in ghostly moans brought in on some wayward wind. She looked at Azula expectantly, hoping it would nudge her into continuing but the girl wasn’t paying attention anymore. Azula’s head was turned towards the sloping planes of the mountains, her eyes narrowed as she scanned the endless sea of treetops.

“I have to go.” She said darkly, turning on her heel and stalking away towards the underbrush.

“What?” Ty Lee blinked. “Wait, hold on a second!” She said, scrambling to her feet.

The wendigo’s decapitated body was lying still-twitching on the ground where Azula had left it, and the girl stepped over it breezily on her way to the edge of the thickest part of the forest. Before Ty Lee could say anything further to stop her, Azula took a running start and disappeared in the blink of an eye. Rushing forward and shoving branches and brush aside, Ty Lee jumped to chase after her, only to find that the girl was long gone with nothing but the receding pattern of shoeprints to mark where she had vanished. Listening carefully, Ty Lee couldn’t even find the sound of movement, only hearing the sound of nighttime insects. It seemed that every part of the forest was committed to burying any trace of Azula's presence, if only for the scene of utter carnage she had left behind.

At Azula's sudden departure, Ty Lee gazed helplessly down at the shotgun still held in her hand, and to the gore littering the ground around the wendigo's corpse. Miles away, the wolves howled again, louder and haunting.

The cold and brittle wind stirring the treetops reminded Ty Lee that she still had the rest of the night to go, and that the peaking hours of the night weren’t kind at higher altitudes.

She traded the gun for the hand axe and jug of kerosene in her backpack, slowly about her gruesome work and trying to think of anything but the implications of what had transpired.

 

If Ty Lee had thought that getting rid of what had killed the hikers would mean the night of well rest she had been so looking forward to, she couldn't have been more wrong. Ty Lee had failed to complete her rite; Azula had killed the wendigo for her, whether Ty Lee would like to think that she had contributed or not. To complete her initiation, Ty Lee needed to finish a hunt unaided, and now she had no idea what she was going to do.

At school, Ty Lee was even worse off than she had been the day before. She arrived with bloodshot eyes, her body sapped of strength, but in its place, fueled with fresh purpose. She moved through her classes restlessly, waiting anxiously at the end of every period for the bell to ring. Between classes, she searched the hallways frenetically, constantly on guard and mindful that now even here, she wasn't completely safe. The student schedules she had pilfered from the school's computer system were useless. As far as she could tell, Azula hadn't been in any of her classes, and neither had her brother.

She had ended up thinking about Azula all night, tossing and turning under her covers, and plagued with the questions that had gone unanswered. It was obvious now that Azula wasn't a demon--at least not in the conventional sense--the imperviousness to holy water and failed rock-salt shells being proof enough. Still, the monstrous strength and speed Azula wielded evinced a number of other theories, but none of which Ty Lee had ever seen before or would know how to choose from.

Most unsettling of all, Ty Lee remembered how quickly Azula had been to defend her. After being shot and veritably drowned, it seemed like it would have been the easy solution to just leave Ty Lee to her own devices, and yet the other girl had readily jumped to fight for her. She couldn't even begin to guess as to what the motivations behind Azula's actions were. Her imagination ran wild with theories, each of which made Ty Lee more nervous than the last. 

A chill ran up Ty Lee's spine to think that her life had been saved by someone (something) that had taken off the head of a wendigo as if the creature had been a mere rag doll. For the young hunter, it had taken at least a few hours to take apart the rest of the wendigo's body, and with each blow from her axe she had been reminded of the ease in which Azula had severed the creature's spine. Everything Song and Jin had said came back to Ty Lee then. It was clear that whatever Azula was, she had been for quite some time.

By lunchtime, she was trying to put together other alternatives. While Azula couldn't hide from her forever, Ty Lee couldn't afford to wait until the other girl felt it was convenient to reveal herself. She loathed the idea of involving Iroh anymore than she already had, but the man was the girl's uncle and it wasn't like another avenue was just going to fall into Ty Lee's lap.

She was at the end of the lunch bar when she realized that she had forgotten her money. Flashing the lunch lady a hapless smile, Ty Lee rifled through her bag with growing urgency, mindful of the line of grumbles filling in behind her.

"It's on me."

The voice at her elbow surprised her almost as much as how swiftly the girl had materialized behind her from seemingly nowhere. She looked at Ty Lee with she was trying to make a decision, tilting her head faintly as she seemed to come to a conclusion, before reaching over the girl’s shoulder and dropping the change onto the counter.

“You don’t have to do that.” Ty Lee said quickly, but Mai was already turning away before Ty Lee could say a word for protest, presumably as a cue for her to follow.

Ty Lee looked feebly from the lunch lady (now ignoring her) to Mai's retreating back. Seeing how fast Mai was disappearing into the cafeteria made Ty Lee hasten, grabbing her tray and hurrying after the taller girl.

On her way out she caught looks from Jin and Song, returning their baffled gestures with a helpless shake of her head, hoping that they would forgive her for the transgression. Song shrugged back sympathetically, but Jin looked unconvinced. Ty Lee hoped that the girl would be able to forgive her. Jin’s envy of Mai was obvious, even to someone who had barely spent a week since arriving at the school.

"Uhm, thanks." Ty Lee started hesitantly once she had reached Mai's side. They had arrived at Mai's regular table, but without any mention towards the girl's conspicuous absence of her usual companions. Mai didn't look like she cared, sitting down and proceeding to tap furiously at her cellphone without any explanation. For a moment, she didn't say a word, suitably distracted with whatever was holding her attention, and instead kicked out a chair in wordless invitation.

Ty Lee hesitated, seating herself cautiously and trying to think of a way to broach the subject of Azula’s disappearance discreetly. She wondered how much the girl actually knew about her friends. Mai and Zuko were more than amicable, but the friendship between the two other girls was harder to place. There was a very real possibility that Mai might not know anything substantial about Azula at all.

When Mai finally spoke, she did so without looking up, but Ty Lee could see the hints of amusement in her eyes as if she were recalling a humorous memory. "Consider it a reward."

"For what?" Ty Lee asked, perplexed and trying her best to appear nonchalant by peeling open the lid of her jello cup.

"Shooting Azula with a shotgun, what else?" This time Mai paused her typing long enough to crack a thin and mirthful smile. "We've all wanted to do that at some point. I'm a little jealous. Zuko said it was hilarious when she got home."

Her smile fell when she glanced up and saw Ty Lee's face.

Mai’s eyebrow raised, her look of bemusement collapsing into a frown at Ty Lee's continued silence. "You know that stuff like that doesn't really hurt her, right?" 

"She didn't tell you." She continued flatly as Ty Lee's mouth opened, and then closed again. " _No one's_ told you.” Mai’s voice was rampant with heated exasperation. “For the love of--"

"Wait." Ty Lee's hand darted forward to take Mai's sleeve, ignoring the pointed look that she got in return. Her mind started racing at a thousand miles, running backwards through all the things she had seen but never understood: their meeting at the teahouse, the other day in the same cafeteria. “Do you,” In her frantic state, she couldn’t think of anything better to say. “Do you know something about her?”

"I should leave." Mai said frostily, moving to stand up, pulling her arm back.

Ty Lee followed her to her feet, her eyes growing steely and accusatory. “You totally do!”

“Whatever. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.” Mai muttered in frustration, more irritated than regretful, her fingers massaging the bridge of her nose. 

“But people’s lives could be in danger!”

“The only thing in danger is my sanity.” Mai said blandly, shrugging her shoulders and holding out her hands contemptuously like she was determined to stay out of it.

Ty Lee glanced to the girl’s phone, its screen still lit up from the stream of texts that blinked across its face. Although she was unable to read the messages, she didn’t have to guess very hard as to who was on the other side of them. She chewed her lip, trying to think of a way to play this right. Grilling civilians for information was an art, that much her family had always shown her. If appeals to the girl’s sense of civic duty didn’t work, there were always other ways.

“Look, I already know what she is. I met Azula in the woods once before.” Ty Lee said, hoping that Mai would take the bluff, her tone dropping in a way that she hoped made her sound sympathetic. “I thought I was going crazy at first, but after awhile it wasn’t that hard to figure out.” She summoned up every ounce of gravity she could muster into her voice, all the while remembering how much the sight of Azula standing with the wendigo’s bloodied head had so shaken and disturbed her.

“She’s impossibly strong and fast. Her skin burns like she’s always has this fever. Her eyes change color. Sometimes she talks like she’s from a completely different planet.” She waited, praying that Mai would actually buy the bait.

“I just need someone to say it.” Ty Lee finished nervously, watching for the subtlest sign of emotion from Mai’s face, and hoping that she didn’t imagine the vague hints of wavering in Mai’s eyes. “Out loud.” She whispered.

After a while, Mai sighed heavily, rolling her eyes and opening her mouth, appearing to give in.

At that moment, Mai’s phone chimed again.

Mai pulled away, breaking the expectant tension and holding the device up with a frown.

“She’s an arrogant jackass, that’s what she is!” Mai said irately to whatever it was she saw on the screen, angrily tearing from the table with her phone pressed to her ear. She left Ty Lee staring after her in muteness, shooting her words at a rapid-fire pace against the receiver that Ty Lee wasn’t able to make out as she watched Mai stormed out the cafeteria doors, pushing her way through a crowd of freshmen as she went.

Ty Lee stood alone at the table, gaping at the swinging doors. An overwhelming sense of déjà vu struck her when she found the entire cafeteria staring at her, everyone having apparently having just heard and saw Mai’s inspired, uncharacteristic outburst. Ty Lee was getting the feeling that the same thing kept happening to her over and over again. She grabbed clumsily for her bag before moving to leave as well, catching Jin’s eye on her way out, and the girl’s unmistakable smirk.

 

Mai wasn’t present for the rest of the school day, and neither was she in class when Ty Lee showed up. By the ending bell, news had circulated around the whole campus that Ty Lee had made herself new enemies of not just Azula but now Mai as well, and the sudden influx of people who began to take a new interest in her was a little unnerving. The fascination the school had with Azula and her companions was mildly disturbing, but lent itself to the continued theory that people had been noticing something strange about Azula for more than a short time.

The school day ended much as it had yesterday, with more questions than answers.

Her handed failure to get anything useful from Mai in the cafeteria solidified the suspicion that there was something happening here that more than just Mai was in on, something involving Azula, and this town that nobody wanted Ty Lee to know about. She had never forgotten about the demonic omens, the ones that floated over the town in a polluting miasma of metastasizing malevolence that no mere wendigo presence could have explained. If evil hadn’t reached this town yet, it was only a matter of time before it did.

Dispirited, Ty Lee headed through the parking lot, her mind lost in her thoughts as she twirled her keyring in hand, absently. Going home through the student parking lot was always a gamble with one’s life and property, especially with freshly licensed students pitching down the lanes at absurd speeds in tons of rubber and steel. If one was secure enough with one, they had to be sure to watch for the other. Ty Lee always parked her car well away from prying eyes, tucked behind the garbage bins near the school’s storage facilities. It was good practice, in case of an emergency, but it had its equal disadvantages, which she was just now discovering to her chagrin.

She was rounding the corner when she saw the girl sitting on the hood of her car, freezing at the sight of her shotgun in Azula’s hands.

With her back turned, Azula didn’t look like she noticed Ty Lee’s arrival. Her slender fingers ran the length of the barrel delicately, tracing its lines with a curious gentleness. Standing from behind, Ty Lee wasn’t able to see her face, but the air of respect was noticeable, like Azula was trying to imagine something as she peered down the sight, aiming the gun towards the sky.

The trunk of Ty Lee’s car was held ajar by the handle of a hunting knife, and bore the evidence of having been gone through with a meticulous eye. Azula still hadn’t appeared to discover her, and Ty Lee held her breath as she moved closer, inching her way towards the car trunk as quietly as she could.

“It’s no wonder you were useless.” Azula said suddenly.

She had the gun barrel held up against her shoulder, still looking off into the surrounding mountains that lined the town’s valley and forests, watching the fog roll off its sides in amorphous shapes of white plumes. “You didn’t have any metal slugs.” Her finger tapped thoughtfully at the trigger guard, the action making the hair on the back of Ty Lee’s neck stand on end. “I’ve been wondering what kind of hunter forgets the right ammunition.”

The last sentence made the blood in Ty Lee’s veins run cold, and reminded her all over again that she wouldn’t even be a close match to Azula if this came down to a fight. It confirmed everything she already knew about Azula’s supernatural nature, and worse because now it was Ty Lee who was the one at a disadvantage.

“Give me my gun.” Ty Lee said, her voice dropping gravely as she approached the girl.

Her precariousness got Azula’s attention, and the other girl turned her head to give the young hunter a look of amusement, like she was suddenly very pleased of herself.

The gruesome wounds that had raked across Azula’s cheek were gone. Up close, Ty Lee couldn’t find the vaguest sign that the injuries had even existed. Where lines of jagged cuts had furrowed her face, there now wasn’t a single blemish. With the way Azula moved, ably and freely, it wasn’t a stretch to guess that the gunshot wound had similarly disappeared. Ty Lee stared at the smoothness of Azula’s skin, trying to piece together what thing existed on Earth could have healed at such an impossible rate. Not even hunters themselves healed that fast.

“Do I make you nervous?” Azula said, her eyes gleamed in a way that made Ty Lee swallow to get the dryness from her throat. “ That’s good. It means you’re not stupid.”

Once she was within distance, Ty Lee lunged forward and pulled the weapon from Azula’s hands. She hadn’t needed to. Azula let it go willingly, watching with the hint of laughter on her lips as Ty Lee stumbled back.

Ty Lee felt her face flush with embarrassment when she checked the port and found that it was empty. A hurried inspection of her trunk found that every shell was accounted for, and despite the mess, so was everything else. Azula remained reposed on the hood of Ty Lee’s car, inspecting the finish of her nail polish as the other girl glanced around them apprehensively for anyone who might have seen their exchange.

Slamming down the lid of the trunk and locking it obstinately, Ty Lee confronted Azula with a simmering glare, but the girl looked back like she was about to laugh in Ty Lee’s face.

“So I hear you’ve been asking questions about me.” Azula went on congenially.

Ty Lee flared. “You can’t just go around treating other people’s belongings like that!” She sputtered, gesturing to were Azula sat resting her feet on the car’s bumper. For her part, Azula didn’t move or react to the admonishment, like the more angry Ty Lee became, the more entertained she actually was. “What if I picked the lock on your car and just dove around in _your_ trunk?”

“The backseat is much more comfortable.” Azula said unblinkingly with her chin resting in the palm of her hand. She looked through Ty Lee’s perplexed expression, the corner of her lips lifting in a ghost of a predatory smile. It reminded Ty Lee of that night in the meadow and the first and only time Azula had revealed her true self to her through the thickness of trees and the darkness of shadows. “You don’t know what I am, do you?” 

“Sure, I do!” Ty Lee stuttered, and Azula smiled wolfishly. “It’s obvious.” She finished weakly, her voice faltering at the end at the recollection of the girl’s fangs and hollow eyes.

“If you did, you would have tracked me down last night and blasted your way into my bedroom.” Azula replied logically, apparently unfazed by her own deductions about the violence of Ty Lee’s character. She affected a disappointed look. “It’s a pity too. I was up all night waiting for you.”

Sometimes, Ty Lee wondered if Azula knew what the things coming out of her mouth sounded like.

She told herself to get a grip. She was letting Azula play with her and get in her head when she was the one who was supposed to be in control. Her parents would have been ashamed to see her trying to reason with someone (something) so dubious and self-serving. There was something undoubtedly terrifying and fascinating about Azula, but Ty Lee was better than this. She had the skills and knowledge that elevated her above having to tolerate being talked down to by some arrogant creep with supernatural powers. In her blood was the stuff of warriors and heroes.

Summoning all the staunch motivation she had, Ty Lee set her shoulders and manufactured the air of command she had seen a thousand times before.

“What were you doing in the forest with the hikers?” In retrospect, it amazed Ty Lee how much she had resorted to sounding like her own mother, but Azula didn’t seem to notice that this was a serious interrogation. She answered drolly, not even denying that she had been the thing that had fled from her in the midnight chase through the wilderness.

“Same as you, I imagine. Looking for what killed them.” Azula leaned back, pulling her arms over her head as she stretched, her clothes hugging the contours of her lithe form as her muscles tensed and relaxed. Ty Lee’s eyes followed the lines of Azula’s body, trying to reconcile the aberrant and bestial shape that had stalked her through the field of rotting corpses with the sharp-looking girl who sat leisurely pulling her wind swept hair from her face. “You’re a terrible shot, by the way.” She said wickedly.

It was like Ty Lee was part of some giant farce.

"And what was that on the mountains yesterday?" Ty Lee exclaimed, sweeping her arm out towards the cresting peaks standing over the city. “What you did was,” She held back the shudder running down her spine as she remembered how easily Azula had wrenched the wendigo’s head from its body, the sudden pulses of arterial spray, and the sound of blood spattering on dead leaves. “Horrible.”

"I think that's my line.” Azula’s face turned sober in an instant at Ty Lee’s last word, the mocking tone of her voice that had been so pervasive during their conversation dropping with humorless grit. “Please tell me you've never been trained before and that I didn't shame generations of your ancestors by saving you from something as pathetic as a wendigo.”

"Hey now!" Ty Lee rankled, deciding that any glimmers of gratitude she might have had for Azula’s help if the girl had proved herself to be a worthy ally just went out the window. "Don’t you think you’re being a little harsh? I would have had it if it weren't for you--"

Azula made a derisive noise. "Clearly."

"--and while we're at it," Ty Lee continued evenly, the jab made at her family having emboldened her. If Azula thought that she was intimidated, then she had no idea who she was dealing with. The girl was strong, but Ty Lee's family was putting down demons and spirits way more powerful before Azula's parents were even born. "I deserve answers, _real_ answers!”

“You don’t deserve anything.” Azula replied brusquely, waving her hand flippantly. “But go ahead anyway, since it’s so obviously driving you crazy.”

There was really no good way to put it.

“What are you?” Ty Lee blurted out.

Azula’s smile always had a bloodthirsty quality to it, and it made Ty Lee’s skin crawl every time she saw it. The girl slid off the hood of the car, and Ty Lee stood her ground defiantly, glaring back into golden eyes. This might have all been a game to her, but to Ty Lee this was her entire life, her heritage, everything she had been born to do. People like Azula--supernatural or not--had been counting her out since she was just a toddler growing up in the shadows of all the women who came before her, and Ty Lee had disproved every single one of them so far. If Azula was thinking that Ty Lee was some bumbling, inexperienced child to be toyed with, she would be doing so at her own peril.

Although it was still very hard to remember all this with Azula inside her personal space.

“This is worth a lot to you, isn’t it?” Azula’s words snaked around Ty Lee with the perilous enticement of an unstated promise. It set the hunter’s nerves on edge.

“That wendigo was my initiation.” Ty Lee replied coldly. In so few words, Ty Lee had at once given a threat and so succinctly and nakedly laid their relationship open. Ty Lee wasn’t going to bargain with her just so Azula could play mind games. Whatever Azula had imagined or surely schemed towards in orchestrating this meeting, Ty Lee was refusing it. She had a ritual to fulfill, a mere roadblock that was standing in her way from achieving the greatness that was promised every daughter of her family. “I still need one.” She finished, hoping that she sounded every bit as brutal as her intentions.

To her delight, the message didn’t appear to have been made in vain.

For a second, Ty Lee was expecting Azula to make the usual spiteful retort, but was surprised to see that this time it was the other girl who pulled back, letting a semblance of respect and breathing room between them. The usual thirst in her eyes faded--albeit modestly--tempered by something else.

“Alright.” Azula conceded at last. Her words were resolute but her amber eyes flickered waveringly like there had been something more she had wanted to say, but didn’t . There was an uncharacteristic moment of hesitation, in a way Ty Lee had never seen her before. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about me.”

Before Ty Lee could get the chance to revel in the successes of her efforts, Azula’s fingers took her by the arm, holding her in place with delicate earnestness. Her instinct was to pull away, but the intensity of Azula’s sincerity held her in place.

She could feel the abnormal heat of the girl’s skin again, and the slow throb of Azula’s pulse traveling down her thumb and into her own wrist, meeting in a unison of intertwining beats. There remained inside Azula the ever-present look of primal hunger, of an untapped lust that Ty Lee had a feeling she would never grow to get used to. If she imagined Azula to be a human at all, Ty Lee would have said that there was a somber note to what the girl said next, of shame and regret.

“But first, I need you to do something for me in return.”


	3. I Know You Are But What Am I?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ty Lee goes above and beyond the call of duty to find the source of Azula's power.

It was Friday morning when he got the call.

"We're coming in for dinner. Make it two." The chillingly familiar voice on the other end of the line said curtly, no sooner than had the maître d' put the phone to his ear.

His blood went cold, and it wasn't comforting to know that her physical presence wasn't needed to elicit the familiar terror. Neither did he need to check to know that there hadn't been a single opening this entire month, and certainly not so short notice and not on the busiest night of the week. Still, his hands were already flipping frantically through the ledger anyway, his fingers running down columns of names and numbers in desperate search of a vacancy, hoping for the last-minute cancellation that wasn't there.

His mouth went dry. "I'm sorry, we don't--"

But she had already hung up, and his blood ran cold at the sound of the dial-tone. The phone dropped back into its cradle with an audible clap that was uncannily in time with the onset of panic. Knowing that from here on out, time had become the essence, he made his way from the front of the restaurant to the kitchen in the hurried pace of a madman, ignoring the strange looks he got from passing staff members.

He pushed open the doors with such force that made everyone looked up at his entrance, and for a moment he stared back--wavering--and appreciative of the fact that the next thing that came out of his mouth would ruin the rest of their day.

There was no gentle way to put it.

"Azula's coming in for dinner."

The entire kitchen--from the sous chef to the garbage boys--went as quiet as the grave.

"That's impossible! We're booked solid!" The saucier exclaimed in protest, dropping his pan onto the stove range. Around him people nodded as if by confirming this emphatically, they could have changed what they had just been told.

"She's coming in anyways. She wouldn’t take no for an answer." The maitre d’ said faintly, dropping onto a nearby crate of radishes. He was starting to believe that he should have listened to his mother and just finished business school.

“What are we going to do?” Someone asked, sounding like he was on the brink of hysteria as he clutched his wooden spoon. “We don’t have a steak big enough; today’s special is duck!”

“After prep, you boys go to the store and buy the biggest steaks you can find.” The sous chef said, pointing a set of tongs at the kitchen hands. “We don’t want a repeat of what happened on her birthday.”

A collective shudder passed through the kitchen at the memory.

“Who’s Azula?” Someone else piped up, a young pastry chef who had only recently joined, and the employees around her gave her a jealous look at her expression of uncertainty like they were the ones who were crazy. 

One of her companions whispering aloud dazedly like he was remembering something horrible. “The devil.”

Eventually one of the servers bit the bullet, while the rest of his colleagues stood in horrified silence. The maitre d’ didn’t envy any of them. If any group was going to bear the brunt of the burden, it would be the hospitality staff and the poor sap subjugated to the actual task of waiting on Azula. He hoped fervently that by the end of the night he wouldn’t be searching to fill a job oppurtunity. “Is the dad coming? Oh God, please tell me at least the mother will be here.”

Things always went better when the elder woman was present as well, although to the great misfortune of everyone who happened to be working those shifts, she had been painfully absent at the family’s recent appearances.

“The reservation was for two and she hung up.” The maitre d‘ shook his head helplessly as the wait staff began a fevered war of rock-paper-scissors.

The sommelier shook the wine list at him. “Things like this are important to know!”

The maitre d‘ glared. “I can’t very well ask a customer if their equally psychopathic father is going to be showing up too!”

“Wait, you said for two.” The pastry chef spoke again. She cocked her head to the side contemplatively, asking the question that failed to cross anyone else’s mind. “Do you think it’s a date?”

The idea was absurd enough to bring much needed amusement to the kitchen. The woman glanced around her as everyone swayed indecisively between bursting into nervous laughter and plunging into a even deeper sense of terror.

“Don’t be silly.” A station cook guffawed uproariously. “Who in the world is dumb enough to date Azula?”

 

Ty Lee had no idea what she was doing.

With the teashop closed for the day, and the long-anticipated weekend finally arrived, Ty Lee had been practically giddy with the evening’s prospects and had approached this moment with a combination of dizzying excitement and relief. Ever since their confrontation in the school parking lot, and Azula’s grudging (but firm) promise of self-disclosure, Ty Lee had been thrilled to have finally gained a foothold in the town’s underbelly.

She stood in her room, standing above the aftermath of hastily unpacked boxes, its contents laying around her in a splayed collection of bladed weapons, firearms, and paraphernalia of varying different world religions. It had been comparatively easy to pack her duffel bag with the most general specifications in mind, figuring that it was important to be as accommodating as possible for whatever task Azula had in store for her. It was considerably more difficult to find something to wear, and she had been in her underwear, rooting around boxes and the sparse closet for the better part of an hour.

She had shrugged off Azula’s instruction that she could bring whatever she wanted, but to “wear something appropriate,” but now wished that the girl could have been more specific. It would have been infinitely helpful to know if they were going to be running through the woods again, or if they were going to be hiking at higher altitudes. The climate on the mountains was tempestuous even on its best days, and Ty Lee would rather not be waiting for hours in the rain like she had on her first hunt in its forests. The idea of shivering her butt off on the sheer side of a cliff face while tracking a target was similarly unpleasant, and not for the first time that week did Ty Lee wonder what kind of favor Azula had in mind.

There were only so many things one would require a hunter’s services for.

She had wondered briefly if this might have been a ruse, a clever ploy to get her to lower her guard and pull her into a trap, but she couldn’t put it together. If Azula had wanted her dead, she had already ignored the best chances without giving open invitation for Ty Lee to arm herself. It seemed far more plausible that whatever tonight was going to be, it was something Azula couldn’t handle on her own.

There was of course the persisting question, posed ever since Azula had suggested their uneasy truce, of what Ty Lee was going to do once she got the information she wanted, what she was going to do with Azula. Her training had always been very clear that in instances not regarding possession that there was really only one thing to do. She didn’t think that there was ever a case of a hunter negotiating with a paranormal being like this, but neither had she ever heard of a supernatural saving a hunter’s life. Undoubtedly, it had been the only thing staying Ty Lee’s hand. Azula was a puzzle, one that Ty Lee intended on solving while she figured out what she was supposed to do with her.

In the end, she decided on the basics, sturdy jeans, the same boots from the other night, and a top that she didn’t mind getting blood on. It was still barely drizzling outside, the droplets misting the window panes in thick sheens, and with a brief afterthought, she threw on a thick parka and hoped that they wouldn’t be treading higher altitudes.

She was zipping up the duffel when she heard tires grinding sluggishly over pavement, and a car horn blowing thunderously from the street. Leaning over her bed, and shoving open her window, Ty Lee peered through the thinning fog down at the car idling under the streetlamp, recognizing it from their first, inauspicious meeting.

A glance as her watch told Ty Lee that they were early on time, but startled, hitting her head on the jamb when Azula slammed on the horn again. 

“Alright, alright! I’m coming!” The young hunter yelled back, rubbing furiously at the back of her head and glaring at the dark tint of the car window, knowing that the other girl was watching her. “You could have at least rung the bell.” She muttered under her breath, ducking back inside to get her things.

Even on a Friday night, downtown was almost barren when Ty Lee stood on the verand, locking up the teahouse. The little activity on the street came from passing cars, and there were no passerbys except for herself as she walked to Azula’s car.

The blue sportscar sat shining in the foggy luminescence of the streetlight, eliciting a not-unfamiliar suspicion in Ty Lee to know that a teenager was driving around a vehicle worth more than what most families in the country--let alone in such a sleepy town--made in a year. It didn’t make any sense. The more she thought about it, the closer she looked at the details surrounding Azula’s life, the clearer it was that the girl didn’t fit into the life she pretended to lead. The clothes, the car, everything surrounding her existed as a veneer. It was as if all its details had been deliberately planned, constructed pretentiously, like all of its parts were making up a giant ruse.

Opening the door, she found Azula in the middle of a heated argument on her phone. The girl was so engrossed that she didn’t even bother to look up at Ty Lee’s arrival, but the sight of the other girl sitting at the wheel made the hunter balk.

In the dark, Azula’s face was illuminated by the glow of the car dash. Ty Lee had only just seen her the previous day but in so short a time, the other girl seemed to have aged. Lines of unrest marred her face, barely visible in the shadows and under thin brushes of foundation and makeup. Her eyes were red-rimmed and sleepless, the concealer doing little to hide how worn she was. The change in Azula was perturbing, and served all the more to keep Ty Lee on her guard.

“I’ll be back later on.” Azula said in a way that implied just how little patience she had left with her conversation. Her gaze was fixed hotly at the dash as her mood souring in response to whatever she was just told. “Stop being overdramatic.” She retorted savagely to her unseen assailant.

“Good evening.” Ty Lee said amicably as way of small greeting, unsurprised when Azula continued to ignore her. Sliding in, she threw her bag into the backseat, and no sooner had she closed the door then Azula pulled the car out, sending them speeding into traffic and the hunter pressed flat-backed against her seat.

Ty Lee scrambled immediately to find the belt buckle.

“That’s not my problem.” Azula said into her phone, as she cut off another vehicle to the mutual accompaniment of more horn blaring. She wove in between lanes, narrowly clipping a truck as she drifted into the fast lane with the engine roaring and picked smoothly through the gears. “Use your brain, dumb-dumb.”

The dubious driving habits in tandem with Azula’s incessant arguing and stubborn refusal to relent on her phone continued for the entire drive.

The coursing highways of stretching woods and frosted mountain peaks passed by at hurtling speeds as they left the valley and commuting traffic behind them. The almost perpetual fog and mist gave away as they traveled further down the mountain roads and the sky deepened and broke awash in a million lights of stars nestling the looming orb of the full moon. Too preoccupied with the repeated close calls with guardrails and head-on collisions, Ty Lee had spent the entire time alternating between clawing at the grab handle and pinching her eyes shut, and so hadn’t noticed the change of landscape from thick alpine wilderness to glossy concrete and the cresting fingers of steel and glass.

It was only when Azula finally pulled the car off the road, setting them into park at the curb while she resumed arguing full force into her phone that Ty Lee got her first opportunity to catch her breath.

Her pulse still racing, she risked a peek out the window, only then just realizing that they weren’t anywhere near the park reserve.

The street they were parked on was narrow and cobbled, assuming the pretensions of an old and untimely quaintness. Pedestrians milled languidly with shopping bags, couples walking with gloved hands held together in the brisk autumn air as they ducked in and out of boutiques and cafes. Neatly groomed hedges laced with glimmering strings of mini lights lit the entire avenue with a soft luminance, bathing the plaza in an atmosphere that was decidedly charming, if not a little intimate.

An amorous couple was necking at the courtyard fountain, and shocked, Ty Lee slowly, painfully, almost undaringly, risked a baffled glance to Azula.

This place wasn’t like anything Ty Lee had expected to be taken hunting.

The other girl had finally pulled the phone away from her ear and hung up, tossing it into her handbag with a sigh of irritation and no offered word of explanation. Reflexively smoothing her hair into place, Azula flipped open the vanity mirror, and Ty Lee’s bewilderment multiplied tenfold. Sensing her sudden alarm, Azula turned and found her gaze, her brow furrowing as she was similarly dismayed to see her companion’s attire.

“What are you _wearing_?”

Outraged at Azula’s audacity, tired from the trip, and still trying to overcome the remaining dredges of motion-sickness, Ty Lee went on the offensive. “What am I--what are you wearing?” She supplied a stiff, but illustrative gesture up and down Azula’s front. To be sure, Azula looked very beautiful and the dress did a lot to flatter the curves of her thin frame, but it was most definitely the worst thing Ty Lee could imagine to wear on a high speed foot chase with man-eating monsters and demons.

Azula looked at her inscrutably, like she couldn’t believe that anyone could be so daft. “I told you to wear something appropriate!”

“ _Appropriate_?” Ty Lee parroted, looking back at her incomprehensibly. She had a whole closet-full of shoes and clothes back at the teahouse just begging to be shown off that would have wiped that infuriating look off Azula face in a heartbeat, if only she had been given the chance. “You didn’t even tell me where we were going! You didn’t say anything. What are we even doing--” She ducked her head, realizing that she was starting to sound shrill and that people passing by were staring at them. Raising a hand against her temple to divert their gaze, her voice dropped to a hiss, her eyes glancing sidelong at the other girl. “I brought _hollow points_.” 

Whatever Azula was going to say stopped in her throat, and the disdainful curl of her lip dissolved as she considered Ty Lee with a penetrating stare. In a flashing moment of hesitation, the girl looked almost tortured, at war with herself as she deliberated something intensely before her jaw clenched tightly, her eyes raking down Ty Lee’s body. “Take it off.” She commanded.

Ty Lee blinked. “What?” She stared, appalled as Azula stripped off her own blazer and started pulling the pins out of her hair, her immaculately done hairstyle spilling down her neck and back, the scent of perfume gently effusing the air. “Wait--” Ty Lee squeaked, instinctively pulling away as the other girl leaned in.

“Come here.” Azula snapped impatiently, pulling Ty Lee’s jacket off with a swift jerk. In a smooth motion she replaced it with the blazer, fixing the lapels and sleeves on Ty Lee’s arms. The hunter sat mutely, dumbstruck as Azula went about pinning the other girl’s braid into a neat bun at the back of her head. Her fingers moved nimbly, dancing gently along the nape of Ty Lee’s neck to catch the errant strands of flyaways and pushed them into place. When Ty Lee turned back around, Azula was watching her closely, her expression hard and unreadable as her eyes traced the contours of Ty Lee’s face.

She sneered in overt disgust. “Now you’re not totally humiliating to be in public with.”

Ty Lee reached back with a patting hand to inspect Azula’s work. “Do you ever think sometimes your behavior gives people the wrong impression?” She asked dubiously.

Azula’s response was to slam the car door as she exited.

The weather was still freezing when Ty Lee left the car, and even at lower altitudes, she felt the skin on the back of her arms prickle, and the harsh wind reaching her through the opening of the coat the other girl had just placed around her. Looking across the car, Ty Lee found Azula handing her keys off to the valet, before straightening her own clothes in the reflection of a storefront, tugging uncomfortably (disdainfully) at the hem of her dress. For all her glamour, there was something unfathomable about Azula, persisting in the edges of Ty Lee’s mind. Her clothes made her appear decidedly regal, but at the same time the most Ty Lee could appreciate was how feral it made the other girl stand out, dressed so ill-suited (scornful), like she was roiling under her skin, yearning to be freed.

Their eyes met again, and Azula beckoned her with a curt crick of her finger, looking suitably pleased with what she took to be Ty Lee’s look of admiration for her wardrobe. Peeved at having been summoned like some lackey, Ty Lee advanced with purposeful indignation.

“We had a deal.” Ty Lee reminded pointedly, pressing for an explanation and struggling to keep pace with Azula’s brisk stride. She didn’t intend to be jerked around with empty promises if Azula couldn’t be straightforward, and she already had the mind to tell her to drive them back. They ended up under the awning of a restaurant, Azula tilting her head almost amusingly at her companion.

“Of course we did, you should learn to keep up, hunter.” Azula replied without so much as another derisive glance as she disappeared inside the doors. Ty Lee froze in the entryway staring after her, sharing a look with doorman--one that if she didn’t know any better, felt slightly pitying.

“Good luck.” He whispered gravely with a heartening thumbs-up that belied his grimness.

Mystified, Ty Lee lifted her hand to return it with one of her own, wondering why all of a sudden she felt the smart decision would have been to ask for a cab.

The restaurant was as elegant on the inside as she had expected. They had arrived at the height of dinner traffic, every table from wall to wall occupied with patrons, and the house staff rushing between them with trays of artistically dressed plates and rosy glasses. By all appearances it was perfectly normal, and even as she was wary to keep her guard up, its familiarity was oddly comforting. It inexplicably reminded her of home, the frenetic energy universal amongst urban metropolises, the skin-deep glamour and impatience, and almost a thousand miles away from where she grew up, in a city so cold and foreign, Ty Lee felt homesick.

Beside her, Azula’s shoe was clicking impetuously on the marble.

At Ty Lee’s entrance, the maitre d’ was already halfway across the lobby, abandoning the line that had stacked at the podium and greeted them with a neurotic smile before launching into harried apologies, none of which seemed to make an appeal to her dispassionate companion.

“Your service is horrendous.” Azula commented coolly, as they were led passed the entire line. As they moved by, Ty Lee heard the fragments of a raging disagreement between a man in a tailored suit who argued insistently with a powerless hostess about the impossibility of his lost reservation, as he had made it three months prior.

The maitre d’ disappeared as soon as she had seated them with more exhaustive and mollifying assurances, and very suddenly Ty Lee found herself staring awkwardly at Azula over a candle flame and a discrete arrangement of flowers. Not looking like she would receive a clarification anytime soon, she opted to follow the other girl’s example and gave the menu an apprehensive once-over. Her fears brutally confirmed, Ty Lee turned it over on the table in mute alarm.

“Okay, seriously, what are we doing here?”

Azula didn’t look up. “You’re a slow one, aren’t you?” She asked in a way that didn’t make it sound very much like a question at all.

After a moment’s consideration, she lifted a delicate hand and signaled a waiter in a manner--to the hunter’s chagrin--was not unlike how she had previously motioned Ty Lee with. The waiter materialized with an impressive, if uncanny, promptness. How a server managed to spy Azula’s tiny gesture was any one of Ty Lee’s guesses and like his predecessor, he looked almost overwrought, his affected enthusiasm dimming considerably when Azula cut him off at his arrival.

“I’ll have the salad. She’ll have the usual.” The girl said, plucking the menu from Ty Lee’s hands without so much as a word of consideration.

Ty Lee balked. “Uh, no I won’t, I’ll--”

The waiter had other concerns. Perhaps thinking that he had misheard and looking mildly confused, the server glanced frantically between the table and the kitchen doors. “Very good, miss, but might I suggest that we have a wonderful porterhouse that we think you would enjoy especially--”

Azula looked at him poisonously, withering him on the spot. “Did I tell you I wanted your opinion, or did just I tell you I wanted a salad?” She dismissed him by shoving the menus against his chest. “They better be right the first time.” She added coldly.

Ty Lee helplessly watched him scurry off, reminded again so well of how Azula had treated her at their first meeting in the teahouse, not sure if the fact that Azula’s imperiousness wasn’t respective to particular service industries was a comfort, or a disturbing trend. However, as soon as he was gone, the other girl reverted back to a look of collected poise, like she was very proud of herself.

Ty Lee looked unsurely between the table and the restaurant. “I thought you wanted me to hunt something.” She stated gravely, crossing her arms.

Azula burst into laughter. It was high and crazed and drew the attention of all the people around them and Ty Lee shrank in her seat almost as if Azula had been castigating her as well. For all her born-talents and gifts, the hunter was wishing powerfully for the ability to disappear on the spot.

“Oh, you were serious.” Azula said after a while once her crazed shrieking had subsided, her expression now returned to the perfect picture of composure. “They said to laugh at all your jokes, even the pathetic ones.” She said lightly by way of explanation.

Ty Lee stared mutely when Azula didn’t go on. “Who’s _they_?”

“This is the deal, hunter.” Azula glazed over Ty Lee’s question like she hadn’t heard it, leaning forward to look into the other girl’s eyes. “It seems hardly fair that I give you all this information without knowing a single thing about you, don’t you think?”

Ty Lee honestly didn’t know what to think. “Um.”

“Of course you promise a truce now, but there’s nothing to keep you from changing your mind later. I’ll tell you what you want, after,” As Azula talked, the less Ty Lee was liking where this was leading. “You answer some of mine. Truthfully.” She said in a way that made Ty Lee believe that the girl had her own methods of evaluating her honesty. Sensing the hunter’s hesitance, the other girl raised an eyebrow in scorn as she leaned back. “Unless there’s someone else who can tell you about the demons and magic conjurers living in the mountains.”

Ty Lee glanced around them. Despite Azula’s outburst, it seemed like most of the restaurant had returned to their own conversations. For a second, she thought she spied a row of faces peeking at them through the window of the kitchen doors, but they vanished as soon as she tried to catch a second glimpse. Were people watching them?

Now she was letting Azula get to her head, and she tried to shake off her own growing paranoia. “What kind of questions?”

Azula smiled greedily. “All harmless, I promise. And at the end of the night, you’ll have everything you want.”

It didn’t matter what Ty Lee thought. Azula had a point; there was no one else to help her on this. In the end, Ty Lee didn’t have a choice and they both knew it. “Okay, I guess that makes sense.” Ty Lee said haltingly.

Their plates arrived and Ty Lee hadn’t realized how hungry she really was until an unnaturally sized steak was placed in front of her. Between packets of instant ramen and whatever Iroh allowed her during work breaks, the closest thing Ty Lee had come to a cooked meal since arriving in town were the school lunches, and her mouth watered, even while so aware that such lavishness wasn’t the most prudent indulgence for a high school girl living abroad on her own. However, before she could send it back, the server had vanished as quickly as he had appeared, and Azula was looking at her expectantly.

The girls’ eyes gleamed ravenously, dropping from Ty Lee’s neck to the table, tilting her head contemplatively as she seemed to come to a decision about something.

“Eat.” Azula said, and Ty Lee’s knee-jerk reaction was to refuse for the imperiousness of the command, but Azula didn’t seem like the kind to be easily dissuaded from what she wanted while she had leverage on the bargaining table, and Ty Lee had her good graces to keep in mind.

Keenly aware of Azula watching her intently, and never breaking eye-contact, Ty Lee lifted the fork to her mouth.

She blinked. “Oh my God.” She muttered.

Azula looked extremely pleased with herself, as if she was the one who had just started digging into her plate with hearty enthusiasm. “Yes, I know.” She commented satisfyingly, running her own fork through her salad, uncommitted, following the hunter’s every movement as Ty Lee battled with herself in trying very hard to not inhale her meal in a single breath.

“No, I meant--” Ty Lee looked up quickly like a deer in the headlights, with one cheek bulging as she tried uselessly to demonstrate her manners while speaking with her mouth full. “I was uh. Thinking of something funny just now.”

“I’m sure.” Azula went on smoothly. “But as long as you promise that’s the only steak you’ll be handling tonight.”

The fork stopped between the plate and Ty Lee’s mouth, and the hunter looked at her in puzzlement.

Azula gave her a clever smile. “Steak, stake. Get it? Because you’re a hunter.” Azula explained patiently, even as Ty Lee gazed back incomprehensively. “Go on, you can laugh. I’m funny. It’s a funny joke.” She said reassuringly.

The hunter stared back dumbly, unsure of how to save the awkward lull in their conversation. For her part, Azula didn’t mind it, only looking at her expectantly.

Thinking fast, Ty Lee swallowed painfully, clearing her throat and managing to convert it into the most sincere laugh she could muster, which ended up sounding flat and half-hearted all the same. “Oh yeah, it totally is!” She said hastily. “I just had to think about it. I didn’t get it before, but boy, I sure get it now.” She managed agonizingly before promptly sticking another forkful of steak into her mouth.

The sincere smile on Azula’s face made Ty Lee feel that she had just done the right thing again. The glimpse was disarming, enough to make her think that maybe Azula might not be so bad after all, and that this strange mediation couldn’t be so terrible if they could both learn to be amicable with each other.

“Yeah, well,” Azula said indignantly. “With hunting skills like that, it’s not a surprise that your brain is so slow.”

Ty Lee’s head nearly collided with the table. “Hey now--” She began.

“How long have you even been training anyway?” Azula asked dubiously. “Aren’t hunters supposed to begin when they’re children?”

“Since I was eight.” Ty Lee replied insulted, not taking kindly to the disbelief on Azula’s face. In reality, it felt like ever since she had learned how to walk, one foot in front of the other in the footprints of her sisters. More than a family business, Ty Lee was part of a great legacy that dwarfed whatever pettiness a small time paranormal like Azula might have. Azula didn’t have any idea who she was dealing with, the kind of forces and people that had guided Ty Lee into becoming the hunter that she was today.

“Yes, that’s right.” Azula tilted her head, her eyes growing far away. “Hunters leave on their rites when they’re…”

“Sixteen.” Ty Lee finished for her shortly.

Azula seemed to perk up when she said that. “I’m sixteen as well.” She said brightly.

Ty Lee’s confusion multiplied. Where had that come from?

Azula was peering at her eagerly, as if hoping Ty Lee would go on and reveal more about herself. Taken aback, Ty Lee glanced back down, unwilling to meet her eyes, sharply aware of Azula’s earnestness and how content she was with watching her eat. If she hadn’t known any better, she would have said that Azula was enjoying eyeing her vicariously, even as she made no move to eat her own meal. The leafy greens were practically all in shreds. 

Azula also seemed perfectly fine with sitting in overbearing silences.

Dessert arrived unsolicited to replace Ty Lee’s barren, enthusiastically (albeit somewhat abashedly) devoured plate, and Azula’s thoroughly picked at salad. Having eaten the entirety of the giant slab of meat, Ty Lee didn’t think that she could fit anything more, until she saw the miserable and pleading look the server gave her dining companion in anticipation of some incoming, arbitrary complaint. She could sympathize.

“That was great, thanks” Ty Lee offered in place of Azula’s perpetual ridicule, her guilt assuaged somewhat when he eventually stopped looking at her like she had grown two heads, and slowly melted into an unsure--if slightly fearful--smile. She smiled back encouragingly as he gave an apprehensive look to the other girl.

“That was horrible.” Azula declared, nudging the plate so that he had to catch it before its contents spilled. “How hard is it to make a salad?”

He left after he poured their coffee (dark and strong, just like how Azula had ordered it at the teahouse) and Ty Lee had to alternate between liberal amounts of milk and sugar to try to get hers palatable.

“So,” Azula said, watching her work, her own fingertips drumming delicately at the edge of the table. “What’s it like having so many sisters who are all better than you?”

Ty Lee’s cup was placed back down so hard, coffee sloshed down its sides, the saucer catching it before it could stain the tablecloth. “What did you say?” She sputtered, fighting to not choke on the scalding liquid.

“I’m just curious.” Azula said nonchalantly. “I’m leagues above Zuko, but it’s just the two of us. Besides, nobody cares about how he feels about anything anyways--”

“How do you know about my family?” Ty Lee demanded, her voice quiet and serious. She now understood so well why Azula had chosen this place for their meeting, a public area where the girl could hand out her threats without any fear of reprisal. Leveraging information was one thing, but if Azula thought that the way to Ty Lee was through her family, she would learn that even novice hunters were not so easily blackmailed.

Her anger went unnoticed, if anything, the sudden graveness of her mood only seemed to be an amusement.

“Please.” Azula said drolly with an illustrative glance. “A girl like you only goes into the business to prove something. Out of the hunter families, there’s only so many of them that are even barely worthwhile. It was just a matter of deduction.” At Ty Lee’s persistent look, she smiled rapaciously. “It wasn’t like I was looking you up or anything.” She smiled. “That would be inappropriate.”

Almost everything about Azula was inappropriate, and Ty Lee was almost about to tell her so when she remembered that some of them were actually raised with manners, so she took a deep sip of her coffee instead.

“Your family is famous, even to us. Honestly, you weren’t what I expected. ” 

This girl was unbelievable.

“I’ve put you at a disadvantage.” Azula said at last, when it appeared that she had finally acknowledged how offensive she was being. Ty Lee wondered humorlessly of what had been the final clue. “That’s alright, you’ll feel better after you know more about me.” She went on assuredly with a hand to her chest, not having lost an iota of confidence. “You and I have a lot in common, really. In fact, you can say that I’m a bit of a hunter myself. I practically grew up in the woods, my father owns half that nature reserve, you know. As you saw on the mountains, I’m much more than a capable tracker, I’m a highly resilient and skilled warrior. I come from a long line of distinguished leaders as well. I’m a strong provider, protector, and I have an excellent genetic history.”

This went on for some time. The more Ty Lee tried to inventory what was being said to her, the more baffled she became. Azula talked nonsensically about everything from her IQ level to the scholarships she had won to esteemed universities abroad. Did paranormals even go to university? Ty Lee imagined Azula sitting in on a lecture about the finer points of wendigo slaughter. The dinner was ending with more questions than she had coming into it. She waited for even a small mention of how Azula came by her superhuman powers, but the girl was perfectly content with regaling Ty Lee with recounts of her numerous athletic awards and academic honors. For all of the preamble, there was very little actual questioning.

Azula talked so long about herself that in the end Ty Lee was able to finish the entirety of her dessert and half the restaurant had cleared out. Despite the time passed, a bill didn’t present itself and neither was it given when Azula eventually pushed her chair back, and reached for her bag.

Looking around frantically, Ty Lee searched for the wait staff that until then had been so impeccable with timely appearances.

“Don’t give yourself whiplash. My dad has a tab here.” Azula observed Ty Lee smugly as she rose to her feet and brushed her hair over her shoulder. “You’re done, right?” She didn’t wait for a response as Ty Lee scrambled to get up and push her chair out.

“Wait, but--” Ty Lee started, wavering between the table and Azula’s trailing figure.  
Lamenting of the loss of her week’s lunch money, she opened her wallet and dropped a few bills on the table before hurrying out.

Outside, it was even colder than when they had first arrived. When she got to the street, Azula was standing on the curb, apparently unbothered by the cold in her bare-shouldered, short dress, moving ambly and undaunted by the brutal frigidity of the air. Moving closer, Ty Lee noticed that not even her skin was prickled, undoubtedly warmed by whatever power the girl was hiding inside her body, the riddle of Azula’s supernatural being that she had yet to be shown a clue of. The night was deepening and Ty Lee was getting impatient.

“So,” Taking a deep breath and standing beside the other girl, Ty Lee addressed her unsurely. “The bill, I didn’t know how much, but listen, it’s getting late and--”

Azula’s eyes fell to the money in Ty Lee’s hand. “You know, to my people that would be an insult.” She said, halfway between amused and derisive. “We’re very old fashioned.” She finished, still looking at the hunter, taking the keys from the valet’s fingers as he walked up, indiscreetly pushing him out of the way as she opened the passenger door and waited for her to get in.

Azula didn’t seem like the kind of person who was very invested in her cultural heritage and Ty Lee spent half the ride back up wondering just how far Azula’s ruse of humanity went. The other half she spent alternating between looking out at the tree trunks flying by, and back at the girl driving the car whenever Azula wasn’t paying attention. The lights of the city (the strange dinner at the restaurant still sitting peculiarly in Ty Lee’s head) faded below them as they disappeared back up the roads climbing into the foggy and untamed brush of the foothills growing thicker with ancient trees, plunging them back into the familiar expanse of the forest hinterlands.

By the time they had hit the outskirts of town, Azula was still talking, and Ty Lee was hiding her reactions by facing the window. At least the driving had improved.

“…pathetic hangers-on. I don’t know why you hang out with those useless, half-brained losers to begin with. They don’t have a single iota of intelligence or originality between any of them. They’ll probably ask you to join the pep squad or something.” Azula finished disgustedly.

Ty Lee’s head snapped back at the last remark, her eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong with cheerleading?”

The car’s acceleration paused momentarily, Azula visibly taken aback. “Please be joking.”

Ty Lee had just spent the whole evening listening to Azula stoke her own ego to no end, hanging on by the thread of comfort that was the knowledge that everything would be over at the end of the night when she finally got Azula’s confession. She could deal with the flights of shameless vanity and self-importance but the unabashed mean-spirited arrogance towards people she didn’t even care to know was cutting it too far.

“We’re not as bad as you think we are--that’s right, we. I won a lot of competitions too before I moved here.” Ty Lee said, lifting her chin as Azula raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Cheerleading is a lot harder than you think it is. I’m pretty good at it as it just so happens. Who cares if I decide to try out for the squad anyways, seeing as it’s none of your business and neither is who I choose to hang out with.”

“None of my--” Azula started, looking at her in disbelieving outrage, like she didn’t know where to begin “You’re a _hunter_! You’re supposed to be a defender of humanity!” She flared, like she couldn’t believe Ty Lee was being so frivolous, so disappointingly naive. “You have bigger responsibilities than waving pom-poms and flipping around doing somersaults like some rodeo clown! Your family might have been foolish enough to think that you were good enough to go on your rite but you’re a long way from being even remotely decent. I could have killed you ten times over in that meadow and you wouldn’t have even known what hit you--”

“Watch the road!” Ty Lee yelped, grabbing the steering wheel and saving them from becoming pancakes under the wheels of a semi trailer that went roaring by with bellowing horns. “Jesus, what is your deal?” She gasped as Azula shrugged her off and righted the car back into their lane.

The other girl didn’t respond for some time, and thankfully the rest of the ride was without anymore life flashing incidents.

It was when they were finally back downtown and they rounded the turn to the familiar sight of the teahouse that Azula answered gratingly, “This night’s been an entire disappointment.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ty Lee retorted, looking up as the car pulled up to the walkway. “ You were the one who pulled all this. I was just along for the ride. Hunters are human too, you know.” _Which is more than what I can say for you._ She thought bitterly at the sheens of blue that passed in the girl’s eyes with the traveling headlamps. Ty Lee looked at the dark windows of the teahouse and back to the glowing clock in the cabin. “So are you gonna cut to the chase or..”

Azula replied by opening the locks, and the passenger door prompted Ty Lee with a distinctive click. “Why should I?”

Ty Lee startled. “You didn’t even ask anything--” Awkward seconds passed as Ty Lee put together what Azula meant, staring as Azula prompted her with a sober look. “What, you mean what it’s like being hunter?” She asked incredulously at the distant recollection, unable to keep the doubtful grimace from her face. It seemed to tiny, so insignificant. Out of all the secrets one could potentially unearth about the society of hunters, their operations, their resources, the question seemed like a joke, a laughable pittance. This couldn’t be all there was to it.

Azula was adamant.

“Uh… I dunno, it’s alright, I guess.” Ty Lee said elusively, squirming under Azula’s prying gaze. “It’s not bad, I mean, training can be a real pain but the super strength and stamina come in handy sometimes. One time when we were trying to break into my friend’s garage to boost some kegs, we made off with like--”

“If you’re not going to take this seriously--” Azula began, reaching across Ty Lee’s lap for the door handle.

“No! Okay, okay, wait.” Ty Lee stammered hurriedly.

Azula leaned back in her seat, looking for all intents and purposes patient, but Ty Lee knew that her chances were hanging on by a thread. If Azula was going to reveal her true self, Ty Lee had to give something in return. There was an answer Azula was looking for, something meaningful and valuable. If she was going to put everything on the line, she wanted Ty Lee to do the same as well.

“Well,” The hunter fiddled with her hands in her lap. “My dad says it’s a calling. Even in hunter families, not everyone is born with it, so I guess we’re all blessed that way. He says that means each one of us is special.”

“You don’t believe him.” Azula stated plainly, watching her carefully as always.

Ty Lee nodded. “My mom says most people live their whole lives and leave nothing behind, but we have a destiny. She says being a hunter is fate.” She could tell that this answer didn’t please Azula either, and emboldened by the other girl’s tacit approval to elaborate, she went on while finding it difficult to remind herself that this was a transaction, and not a time to be spilling her guts to a complete stranger.

“But you really wanna know what it’s like? It’s stifling. I mean, ever since I was a kid, ever since the day I was born, I knew what I was and what I’m supposed to become. I have my mom and all my sisters breathing down my neck to get every little thing right. I know I’m part of something great, but…It’s like nothing is mine. ” She hesitated, failing to put objective words to something that had ruled every particle of her being for so long.

“You should see us. We even all look the same. Like everything I have is just borrowed from the people before me. Like I’m just this little speck, this tiny dust mote, and with or without me, things move on. Like, even if I do these things, they don’t matter.”

When Azula didn’t respond, Ty Lee took a breath. “So now you have to tell me.”

After a pregnant pause, Azula pulled a hand away from her chin, her eyes having remained dispassionate throughout Ty Lee’s entire tirade. “Well that would be spoiling the fun, wouldn’t it?”

She blanked. “What, but--”

“Silly hunter.” Azula was full of condescension. “You never show the hand you’re playing with.”

Ty Lee stared, the realization that she had been played seeping over her in furious waves, and she sat quivering in barely contained anger. “You lied to me!”

“You’re a genius.” Azula said sardonically. “Honestly, if you haven’t figured it out by now, you’re never going to.” She smiled in addition to the already-blatant affront. “It didn’t take much for everything to come spilling out, did it? Now I know all the hang ups of sad, weak-willed hunters. Oh, my sisters are all so much better then me, it’s so hard being me, I want to be special, I want to live my own life, boohoo.” She broke off from the exaggerated mockery of Ty Lee’s voice with disgust . “I’ve never seen anything so pathetic.”

Grabbing her parka and bag from the backseat, Ty Lee tore out of the car.

Standing on the sidewalk, she pulled Azula’s blazer off violently, throwing the coat at the other girl with such force that Azula had to slap it out of the air to prevent it from smacking her in the face.

“I don’t care what you are!” Ty Lee yelled, her voice going just as shrill as Azula’s imitation. The other girl had toyed with her the entire night, stringing her along as nothing but an evening’s cheap entertainment. The knowledge made Ty Lee’s cheeks burn and she clenched the duffel tighter in her fist with half the mind to reach inside and show just how capable of a hunter she actually was. Yet Azula remained as composed as always, and had gone back to being unreadable, the amusement in her eyes withering back into stony indecipherability as Ty Lee tried failingly to think of a comeback.

“If you come near me again, I’ll--I’ll show you exactly what hunters do with monsters!” Ty Lee finished lamely, slamming the car door before turning to storm into the teahouse.

She fumbled pitifully in the doorway with her keys before finally getting inside and she didn’t stop until she got to her room. She was halfway up the stairs when she heard the distinctive rumble of the sports car engine and rubber on pavement screeching into the echoes of the fog. A look out the window proved that Azula indeed had left, but that only served to remind just how big of a fool Azula had made her out to be and was probably now off somewhere having a laugh at her and her family’s expense.

Dumping her things onto the floor, Ty Lee threw herself on the bed and spent a good couple of minutes screaming curses into her pillow.

It didn’t make her feel any better, except only to make her feel more exhausted.

After a while she rolled onto her back, blowing her bangs out of her eyes as she glowered at the ceiling and fantasized wildly about punching a certain supernatural repeatedly in the face. The hairpins that Azula had placed into her hair were digging uncomfortably into her scalp, and Ty Lee one by one flicked them spitefully to the ground.

At the end of the night, she had come up empty-handed, and knew even less of what to do. While she might not have discovered Azula’s identity, there were certain agreed upon standbys in the hunter community that were by and large supposed to vanquish most supernatural beings. Although none of which Ty Lee could use. Azula could very well be evil, but her assumed persona was still related to Iroh and it wasn’t like Ty Lee could just eradicate the niece of her employer and landlord: a kind old man whom for all investigations, believed the girl to be normal.

Even worse, Azula’s motivations remained just as cloudy as always. As humiliating as the night was for Ty Lee, Azula had left the evening with very little material gain as well. Nothing was making sense.

For the first time since coming into town, Ty Lee wondered if she was in over her head. Her initiation hunt--that was supposed to have ended quickly--had failed, and while she hated to admit it, she had placed all of her hopes on her deal with Azula panning out and now she was back to square one. Even if she still had until the end of the year to complete the rite, the confidence with which she had started with was fast waning, and in its place the remembrance of all her sisters’ doubts and second guesses rang hauntingly with Azula’s taunts.

Deciding that the answers wouldn’t come tonight anyways, Ty Lee opted for rest in hopes that with the morning would come a fresh perspective and a new attitude. Even without a designated hunt, she still had the entire town to canvas in search of the source of the demonic omens. Wallowing wasn’t going to help her find a new lead or figure out what her next step was and she told herself that she had to remain upbeat. Pulling off her clothes, she turned off the light, determined to go to bed.

It took a long time before she could chase the dark clouds away in her mind.

Hours later, long after Azula had gone and the sky was at the blackest part of the night, Ty Lee woke up again.

Sitting straight up in bed, handfuls of sheets balled in her palms, the creeping webs of sleep were still miring but even so she couldn’t rid herself of the overwhelming sense of dread. A look through the skylight told her that daylight was far from coming, and she stared at the spots of tenuous pale moonbeams, trying to place something her grandmother had once told her about the hunt and the nature of survival.

Dressing hastily and grabbing her keys, she drove out to the storage lot. The longer she drove, the more her conviction grew.

By the time she reached the trailer, she was so frantic that she all but stumbled inside, not bothering with the generator or space heater. Armed with her trusty torch, she veritably threw herself at the library. Her fingers flew over the spines of ancient, cracked tomes, trying to follow vestiges of memory as she traced herself from one wall of bookshelves to the other. When she found what she was looking for, her heart stopped at the faded lettering, knowing that what she suspected was ludicrous in its impossibility, but without it she would truly have nothing else.

The book was as big as her torso, falling apart at her careless touch when she dropped it on the reading bench, and coughed through the thick plumes of erupting dust. For added measure (she had be sure) she pulled a couple of more volumes from its surroundings, laying them all out on the reading bench in splayed manuscripts of texts and gruesome engravings illuminated by her scattering light scope flicking from one page to the other.

In the middle of the night, surrounded by her mother's books, with the sole company of her flashlight, Ty Lee began researching werewolves.


	4. I Can Almost See You

The first thing Ty Lee did was call her sisters.

"Werewolves are extinct, Ty Lee." Qin Lee said patiently, even as Ty Lee detected the undercurrent of exasperation. "The last ones died out during grandma's time." Qin Lee might have been one of the nicest, but she also had very little tolerance for what she deemed to be lax attention and poor diligence. It had been somewhat of a gamble calling her first; Ty Lee wished strongly that Ming Lee had only picked up when she first rang her.

"Yeah, I remember." Ty Lee said, trying her best to keep the annoyance from her tone, as she rolled a pebble gratingly under her foot. Grandma Ty Min had a penchant for waxing poetically about the good old days when the holidays rolled around and she got too far into the liquor cabinet. "But I'm asking if it's  _possible_  some survived." She explained carefully before she heard the snort of derision as her older sister struggled to remain polite.

"Anything's possible, but that doesn't make it probable." Over the phone, Ty Lee could hear the mechanical punch of the loading press as Qin Lee went on. "Werewolves were eradicated pretty conclusively. The families out west chased them all over the world; the history is pretty brutal to read. It's all there in mom's library. Ty Lee, what's this about?"

Of course, Ty Lee had known all this. Once she had pulled up every resource on werewolves she could find in the trailer, she had spent the whole night working again, poring over every last tiny, barbaric detail. Unlike before, this time she hadn't felt the least bit tired, powering through the midnight hours like a woman possessed, cross referencing her old notes to make sure-to be absolutely  _certain_  that this was the closest thing possible.

Ty Lee balked at her sister's question, reluctant but finding no way around talking about what had happened with Azula at the teahouse and at school. She left out the parts about finding Azula with the dead hikers, the following encounter with the wendigo, and her own subsequent failed rite. There was no point riling her sisters up about something that she could handle on her own (no point getting lectures about things easily fixed.)

When she finished, she could almost picture the thorough disinterest with which Qin Lee was regarding her concern. "Did you see the actual transformation?"

Ty Lee hesitated again. "Well no, but-"

"Well there you go." Qin Lee sounded very satisfied. "You have a skinwalker. They're similar so you shouldn't feel guilty about getting carried away. It's your first hunt so of course you were hoping for a little excitement."

Barely more than a few weeks and Ty Lee had already forgotten what it was like to be talked down to like she was still nine years old and didn't know the difference between a vampire and a rougarou. She was discovering that there could be a unique disappointment in rediscovering the things she had thought left behind.

"By the way, you know you're not supposed to call us on your initiation hunt, right?"

In a moment of daring, she called the other youngest sister-or rather-the sister that was closest to her in age and directly older than her and subsequently could always be counted on to be good-natured and unpretentious. Su Lee was only two years Ty Lee's senior, had passed her rite with flying colors, and begun to take the next step of the hunter profession, which was the care and protection of a vulnerable community or populace. In Su Lee's case, it was a village in Bihar under attack by a pack of vetala. Remote as it was, Ty Lee was surprised to be able to reach her sister at all. When it was over, she wished that she hadn't even tried.

Su Lee laughed for three whole minutes.

Ty Lee flared. "It's not that funny!"

Su Lee's response was to wheeze breathlessly. "Werewolves." The other girl gasped, and there was a thudding over the receiver as Ty Lee's older sister theoretically started pounding her fist in speechless, uncontained mirth. "Going to high school."

In the end, Ty Lee hung up the phone.

"I was wondering how long it would take you to cave and call one of us." Ky Lee said smugly when Ty Lee attempted her next. While it would have been too much to say that Ky Lee was unpleasant, Ty Lee took comfort when phoning her in knowing that Ky Lee herself had never been one to rigidly follow hunter doctrine, and could always be counted on to be up-to-date about the latest  _anything_  that was happening in the underworld.

It was evening where Ky Lee was and it was hard to make out her sister's words against the low roar of street traffic and clinking dishware. Judging by the flurried streams of the foreign language running by in the background, her sister had only just sat down to dinner, ostensibly at a roadside booth packed elbow to elbow with locals in some picturesque overseas metropolis. Global intelligence gathering had so many perks and traveling around the world for the sake of providing a network for the family business always seemed so enviable to the youngest daughter. "Su Lee owes me a hundred euros." Ky Lee said proudly.

Ty Lee roiled. "Good luck getting the money where she is right now."

"So you called more than one of us." Ky Lee sounded delighted. "Now she owes me two hundred."

Ty Lee roiled and strongly resisted the urge to stomp her foot. "I can't believe you started a betting pool on me!"

"Don't worry, it's just harmless fun." Her sister said, placating. The woman had a gift for turning any situation into a profit. "We all know you're going to be fine. You're doing everything you're supposed to, alternating patrol routes, writing every day in your journal and such?"

Ky Lee was speaking, of course, about the journal that all hunters were supposed to keep about their travels, marks, and kills. Of the many habits of the practicing hunter, documenting one's observations and information was integral. Being able to pass on lessons to the larger community and subsequent generations was a hallmark sign of being a good hunter. It was even more important for those beginning their first for ways into the profession.

"Totally." Ty Lee replied smoothly.

"Ty Lee." Her sister sighed.

The rest of the conversation wasn't very useful after that.

In a last ditch effort, Ty Lee called the twins, hoping with every fiber of her being that it wouldn't be Ai Lee who answered. The duo worked exorcisms together and the erratic nature of their work resulted in a schedule that was very hard to peg. It would be to Ty Lee's extreme detriment if she caught Ai Lee in the middle of preparing for a job, or even worse, when the woman was sleeping.

Ty Lee's luck seemed to have changed at last when the phone picked up and she was met with An Lee's familiar soft treble.

"Werewolves are extinct-" An Lee yawned sleepily in reply.

"Yeah, I know!" Ty Lee sighed in aggravation. Really, how stupid did they all think she was?

"You're keeping warm up there right?" An Lee went on, brushing aside her younger sister's questions like Ty Lee hadn't even asked them. "It's cold where you are. Don't push yourself too much if you don't think you can do it. Being a hunter can be really hard and not everyone's cut out for it, you know? We know that you weren't very sure about being a hunter anyways; no one will blame you. Oh, that reminds me. We ran into one of Suki's cousins while working a job the other day. Turns out she's just finished her rite and is headed back so you can see her when you get home, wouldn't that be nice? She was hunting some warlocks-a whole cadre of them-can you imagine?"

Before An Lee could finish speaking, there was a sharp voice and some fumbling on the other end of the line. An Lee made a brave effort of trying to ward off the offending party before the phone was taken away and she was replaced by the harsh, badgering tone of the younger twin.

"Ty Lee, is that you?" The voice barked so loudly that the young hunter had to pull the phone away from her ear.

Ty Lee rubbed a hand to her brow, forcing a grimacing smile that her sister couldn't see. "Hey, Ai Lee." She said brightly with pretended enthusiasm. If there was anything the other woman had taught her growing up, it was that smiles and glosses of light-hearted humor could do wonders in guarding ones weaknesses from emotional predators, like-for example-the preying efforts of an elder sibling.

"We're not supposed to be helping you on your rite, you know better than to call." Ai Lee said darkly.

"It's kind of an emergency…"

That did little to assuage the sentiments of the elder sister. "Is it or isn't it, Ty Lee? Make up your mind." She snapped.

Ty Lee wilted. "Well-"

"When are you going to get your act together?" Ty Lee almost flinched at the naked disappointment in Ai Lee's voice. "If I have to find out through another hunter that you're embarrassing the family name, God help me Ty Lee, I swear." Distantly, she could hear An Lee talking and being shrugged off as the other twin went on, handedly destroying the rest of Ty Lee's nerve.

Sitting on the steps of her mother's trailer, the thick folder of notes compiled through hours of research resting at her side, Ty Lee felt herself growing smaller and smaller as Ai Lee talked.

"Everyone else might be fine with coddling you since you're the youngest, but back when we were going through training mom would take to us with a switch if any of us had so much as put a  _hair_  out of line. You're getting it easy as far as I'm concerned, mom and dad practically held your hand. Meanwhile your sisters and I have nothing to show for it while your friends' families come bragging to us about how so much better they're doing. Really, a  _werewolf_ , Ty Lee?  _Really_?"

When her conversion with Ai Lee was over, the sky was just turning light. The morning air had started to dew on her clothes with the brimming dawn, and Ty Lee sat with the phone in her lap as she watched the sun spill over the treetops and cracks of the mountain ranges. She waited for a while before heading inside. The storage lot was still empty of potential prying eyes, but the talk with her sisters had left Ty Lee feeling strangely vulnerable.

For a moment she stood over the messy disarray of notepads, ancient grimoires, research texts, and antiquated hunter journals, the meticulous efforts of her studies thoroughly undermined by the expertise and field knowledge of five seasoned hunters. She stared at the clutter of stained tea cups, disorganized manuscripts and ink-stained napkins, having just minutes ago been so proud and confident, and now at a loss.

It was like all the exhaustion that she had managed to keep at bay during the night had just risen up to overwhelm her at once, and she ached desperately to go back to her room at the teahouse for a moment's respite.

She dropped her cell phone, along with the stack of papers back onto the reading bench before collapsing with a heavy sigh into the chair, burying her face in her arms.

It had-at least-been good to discover that Suki was doing well, although Ty Lee had never entertained the notion of anything besides the fact. Growing up together, Suki's talent and foreseeable greatness had always seemed like waiting inevitabilities for Ty Lee, Ty Lee who had in the meantime struggled and wavered while her sisters pressed and nagged about life decisions she wasn't yet ready to make. Remembering her childhood friend made Ty Lee homesick all the more for the life she had left behind, and envious of the success Suki had blossomed into. In the meantime, her own road in front of her remained ambivalent, rife in its uncertainties.

Before she could truly begin to wallow in the dimness of her circumstance, Ty Lee's phone rang.

Her forehead still pressed to pages of musty, moldy tomes, Ty Lee tilted her head to peer at the flashing screen of her cellphone, the small device rattling along the table precariously before she lazily reached out a hand to catch it just as it slipped off the edge. Flipping it open, she saw that it was Ming Lee returning her call from previously. On a self-pitying whim, she debated rejecting it, but managing to scrounge up the last of her bravery, gamely hit the call button.

"Hello?" She greeted exhaustedly with the phone to her ear, her head still resting glumly on the table.

"Ty Lee?" Ming Lee asked again when there was no answer. "Ty Lee, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." The younger girl replied hurriedly with her eyes closed. The lack of sleep had given her a pounding headache.

"Everyone's saying that you've been calling. Did something happen?"

There wasn't a way to answer without making herself sound like a fool again. Ty Lee didn't think that she could have borne it if like with everyone else, Ming Lee decided that she was being fanciful and misguided with the material she had just spent hours scouring and assembling painstakingly.

"No, it's-" Ty Lee laughed, briefly wincing as she propped herself up through great effort. "I found something weird and like-totally got carried away. It's nothing, I figured it out on my own. I'm really sorry for calling."

Ming Lee was the oldest-Ty Lee's elder by a wide margin of fifteen years-and like with all older siblings in large families, had an uncanny sense of perception and endless capacity for patience, in relation to the rest of her family. Respective to the woman was also the invaluable skill of knowing which questions to ask-and even better-when to and when not to ask them. Ty Lee had very nearly forgotten the strange powers that came with these virtues, and her older sister's next words stretched from across time and space to remind her again why Ming Lee had always been her favorite.

"Well tell me anyway." Ming Lee said and Ty Lee spent a breathless moment staring mutely at her folder of haphazard notes.

In the middle somewhere, was a hastily drawn portrait she had conjured from memory. Sitting between anatomy diagrams and lengthy excerpts from archaic documents, Azula glared up at her, as fierce and bold as she was in reality, her likeness rendered in feathered pencil strokes by Ty Lee's careful hand. On another page, Azula stood in profile so as to capture the veiled strength in her poise, and on another she was held twice in mid-motion (once as Ty Lee remembered her in the school hallways, and again as she remembered her racing through the forest trees) to amplify the clues the young hunter had found in the nuances of Azula's body language. Thinly-traced needles stretched from her body, connecting her to annotations and footnotes that Ty Lee had made about werewolf physiology and theories of behavior.

Ty Lee took a breath, staring down at the sketches and portrait. "I think I found a werewolf."

In contrast to her other sisters, Ming Lee didn't respond. In fact, the pause stretched for so long that for a second Ty Lee thought that the woman had hung up on her.

"Are you sure?" Ming Lee asked at last, her tone as impartial and aloof as before.

There was nothing else added to the question, no reprimands or warnings. In a heartbeat, the last days collapsed in Ty Lee's mind, the rapid buckling of each piece pulling together in a picture that had nagged (haunted) her even since the encounter in the meadow.

It was so strange how she could remember everything so exactly, and yet so differently, where she now so clearly remembered the monstrous looming shadow melting into the form of a human, the purposes in Azula's offbeat remarks now given new meaning, the eyeshine that Ty Lee had before taken for the signs of demonic corruption.

"Positive." Ty Lee said.

Ming Lee replied without missing a beat. "In that case, you have your work cut out for you. This won't be your average hunt, Ty Lee. There's a reason why the old hunters wanted them all dead." She said, with no added word of disbelief or any inquiry as to how by chance, in such a remote place, a fledging hunter could have stumbled upon the remnants of one of the most dangerous species of living creatures in history.

Even more troubling than their fearsome reputations had been the savageness of their endeavors. The histories had made it clear that werewolves had been marked expansionists, driven by instincts to broaden their territories to further their access to roaming ground and prey. To this end, they had warred intensely with each other to gain better resources, the battles between rivaling packs being as vicious and barbaric as the beasts themselves. In the pursuit of these goals, werewolves had destroyed everything in their path with little discretion and it had often been left to hunters to put an end to the slaughter.

The books were vague with what exactly had convinced hunters of the need to erase werewolves from existence, only that the purge had been the undertaking of a specific group of hunter families that while small in number, were powerful in skill and famous in renown. As thorough as the books had been about histories and hunting tactics, it had been just as bereft of any substantial details of living patterns and behavior. The journals had taken great pains to stress the bloodthirsty nature of werewolves and their consumption of human prey, and while Ty Lee didn't doubt the veracity of these reports she similarly didn't doubt the soundness of her own research of local municipal records.

Before this week, no one had been disappearing or dying suspicious deaths. Barring the late demises of the hikers, there had been almost nothing to go on. Azula had lived here for years, and had been just as surprised (albeit secretive) as Ty Lee was about the slaughter in the meadow. It lent to a different theory, one even more daunting than the first. As gruesome and horrific werewolves could be, they weren't unholy, soulless entities and the question of the demonic omens went unanswered. There was something else in this town, something that Ty Lee didn't know about.

But Azula might.

"If you found one, there's bound to be more." Ming Lee went on, her voice drawing Ty Lee from her thoughts and back into the conversation. "The gene is inherited, and it was their habit to live in family units."

Ty Lee had thought about that too. If Azula was a werewolf that meant Zuko was one too, and just as feasibly, so was Iroh. It had been half the reason she didn't dare return to the teahouse now. She hadn't forgotten what Mai had said about Iroh never hiring anyone for his teashop and it made her think back to all her interactions with the old man in a newfound light of dread. It made Ty Lee start to speculate wildly about his true intentions.

"You can forget all the things about transformation cycles and curses. When it came to werewolves, it was difficult for the old archivists to sort where fact ended and legend began."

"So what does that mean?" Ty Lee frowned around her, wondering pitifully about how much of her research had actually been to good use.

"It means be careful." Ming Lee said firmly. "Werewolves were notoriously tricky to hunt but there were proven methods. Do you have something to write with?"

Ty Lee started patting around the desk frantically to find the pencil she had fumbled. Scurrying to find a corner of a notepad that she hadn't scribbled on, she picked the phone back up just in time to catch the beginning of her sister's stream of instructions.

"You're going to need a lot of wolfsbane. It won't help shroud you from their hearing and vision, but it will hide your scent. Stay out of sight and engage from afar. Anything that supposedly fast is going to try to close the distance, but a single shot can do it. Silver bullets were one of only two things that supposedly killed werewolves. I know you enjoy your shotgun but that might be cutting it too close. You've been practicing with your rifle, right?"

"Uh, yeah." Ty Lee said haltingly.

There was still, of course, the question that had been persisting in the back of Ty Lee's mind ever since Azula had posed their uneasy (disastrous) dinner meeting, the issue of what Ty Lee was going to do once she had found out what Azula was. Her training had always made the point very clear that in instances not involving possession, there was really only one course of action. She didn't think that there was ever a case of a hunter negotiating with a paranormal before at any time in history, but neither had she ever heard of a paranormal saving a hunter's life. As much as it pained her to admit it, Azula's presence had been momentous. It shamed Ty Lee to wonder what would have befallen her had the other girl not been there the night on the mountain.

Ming Lee took her hesitance for another meaning. "Don't worry, if there was one thing hunters were sure on, it was that silver was infallible. Even the slightest amount in the bloodstream had a blighting effect on them. There should be plenty somewhere in the trailer for you to melt down."

"Great, thanks." Ty Lee replied dumbly, hoping that she wasn't sounding ungrateful for the great lengths that Ming Lee had made in answering her phone call. The pencil in her hand struck out another series of paragraphs before circling a reminder to rent space in a nearby foundry. She frowned, knowing that was going to mean more money and more money meant more work and she thought back again to the teashop she had so unexpectedly grown fond of, and what she was going to do now with no place to go home to.

"Wait," She added hurriedly before Ming Lee could hang up. "You said there are two things that can kill werewolves. What's the other one?"

Her sister was quiet again and Ty Lee could imagine the mirthful smile on Ming Lee's lips.

"That's the legend part. No one knows."


	5. This Messiah Needs Watching

She was getting tired of waiting.

Ty Lee had been kneeling in the makeshift brush cover for hours, huddled precariously in the trees, peering down the hillside through the narrow vision of her scope. It hadn't stopped raining yet. The water fell first in torrenting sheets of wind and half-frozen slush, and now fell mercifully back into the hazy drizzle that drifted in with the low hanging fog. Ty Lee's fingers had become numb in her gloves, and every now and then she had to pull her arms inside her coat and blow into them. This definitely wasn’t how she envisioned spending her weekend.

There was very little about hunting that was convenient or comfortable. In Ty Lee’s experience, if she were lucky, one usually came at the expense of the other and she was just reminding herself of this as she approached the third hour of watching the house's dim windows and empty driveway.

No one was home. That much had been obvious when she found the sprawling estate resting beneath snaking lines of barely cleared roads.

Finding Azula’s house had been no small feat. There was little to go on and nobody knew much about the girl to begin with. Breaking into the school’s office had only yielded an address that didn’t exist. Ty Lee had been almost at a loss until she remembered that Azula had said something at the restaurant about her family owning lands in the mountains. From there she had to go to the town’s recording office to obtain the town’s comprehensive zoning plans. Luckily for her, there were very few people who held titles to land tracts large enough for what Azula had described, and there were fewer still those who had applied for building variances in areas remote enough for a werewolf’s hunting grounds.

The trees were ancient here, its trunks tall and thick and its branches gnarled and misshapen. The forest felt primordial and Ty Lee knew as soon as she had come upon the house that this was where Azula lived.

In the beginning she had almost walked clear past the house, mistaking its unassuming facade to be part of the thicket of endless trees and greenery. The structure had been cleverly built into the forest, vines crawling in trellises up walls, disguising the walls of the house’s wings that hugged against the surrounding trees. There was a cleared meadow that ran up the sloping hillsides before disappearing back into the woods, drawing her line of vision back towards the foothills and away from the house. If she had been less experienced (less careful) she might have been here for hours without finding anything. She had climbed into the forest canopy, weaving together dead branches and leaves as a cover, and waited with pencil to notepad, documenting each painful hour that crept by uneventfully. The beginning elation that she had felt with the discovery of the house had since disappeared when it grew increasingly clear that no one was returning. She was beyond past thinking that this trip had been pointless.

The herb salve that Ming Lee had instructed her to use made parts of her skin tingle. Rubbing her neck uncomfortably under her scarf, she grimaced with a glance at her watch. This whole thing was turning out to be a huge letdown.

Taking comfort that the weather on the mountain could be clearing up at any time, Ty Lee pulled aside the cover of the hide site as she stood up, balancing herself wobbly as she brushed dead twigs from her. It looked like she would have to come back some other time and preferably soon if she wanted to stop living out of her mother’s trailer.

She was shoving her things back into her pack when she heard the low rumble of a car approaching and the crush of dirt underneath rubber. She looked through the rainy mist to see twin beams of headlamps flicking between the trees down the hillsides.

There was still no sign of the blue sports car or the motorcycle. Ty Lee instinctively crouched lower in the branches and watched as a white van pulled up to the front of the house, dimming its light and cutting the engine. The hunter couldn’t look past the windshield to see the occupants and briefly panicked at the thought that she could have staked out the wrong house. The feeling mercifully dissipated when the driver’s side door opened and Ty Lee caught a glimpse of Zuko’s face beneath the shadows of his hoodie before he disappeared again towards the back of the van, pulling open the doors in search of something. Hauling out a large metal object that remained partly obscured by the car doors, Zuko set it on the ground and appeared to struggle with it.

He called out something that the hunter couldn’t make out and the crosshairs of Ty Lee’s scope moved from his face back to the van. The door on the passenger’s side opened and the hunter had to look twice to make sure that it was indeed Azula who emerged with one hand on her neck, shielding her long hair from the rain and sweeping the trail of her ponytail under the collar of the track jacket she wore. It took a moment for Ty Lee to be certain that it was indeed Azula, who looked so unrecognizable without the crafted glamor of make-up and uniformity of designer labels. Her jeans were scuffed in the knees and cuffs, and her sneakers were worn well past their prime and the hunter wouldn’t have believed it until she saw herself how easily these things lent a nakedness that Ty Lee felt strange to see (intruding; a voyeur in the literal sense.)

Opening the sliding door on the flank of the vehicle, Azula said something unheard to Ty Lee as she held her hand out.

A woman that Ty Lee didn’t recognize climbed out of the van, visibly steadying herself on the girl’s arm as Azula helped her to her feet. Even bundled under swathes of thick clothes and a woolen shawl, the older woman’s frailty and unnatural thinness were obvious. Her eyes were shallow and her cheeks sunken into gaunt angles, locks of limp hair falling from the bun at the back of her head. Beckoning Azula closer, the woman leaned forward to say something to the girl that Ty Lee couldn’t hear.

“Help me with mom’s chair.” Zuko called, frustrated with his failed efforts to unfold the stubborn wheelchair.

Azula looked scornful, her eyes moving from her brother to the house. In a single motion, she stooped to take her mother under the knees, another arm bracing her back as she lifted her with such weightless ease and suddenness that the older woman startled to throw her arms around her daughter’s neck. “Leave it before you break it again.” His sister barked over her shoulder, walking with the woman towards the house without another word.

“She needs it unless you want to carry her all day!” He insisted, clearly fed up with Azula’s shameless inconsideration, shaking the chair one last time in frustration before blowing out an irritated sigh.

The wind was picking up again and Ty Lee’s breath shuddered as the wind shifted in the trees and an icy breeze cut right through her jacket and she huddled her arms futilely to stay warm.

At the door, Azula seemed to freeze with one foot across the threshold, as if halted by an invisible command. Down in the driveway, Zuko similarly stopped in mid-motion, placing the still-folded wheelchair to the ground as he pulled the hood from his head to scan the treetops. His eyes found hers with alarming efficiency.

_Oh crap._

Any doubt that Ty Lee had about Zuko being a werewolf evaporated when he closed the clearing between the house and the forest in scant seconds and charged the tree.

There was a thundering crack as the tree underneath her jerked violently, the impact shoving her clear into the air, her fingers clawing for the branch that slipped from her as Ty Lee tumbled clumsily to the forest floor below. The guns strapped to her back overburdened her and she crashed unsteadily on her feet before fumbling on her behind. Her rifle disappeared into the underbrush and before she could blink, Zuko was on her.

The breath left Ty Lee's lungs in a giant whoosh as the boy grabbed her by the lapels of her jacket and slammed her back against the ground. As prepared as she was, his strength surprised her and she was reminded of how Azula had catapulted her out of the way of the charging wendigo that night on the mountain like she had weighed nothing, and yet this was so profoundly different. His hands took her around the throat and she knew that this was something else entirely. She could hardly breathe.

Trying to wrest herself from Zuko's grip, the hunter became keenly aware of her feet leaving the ground as he hauled her to her feet and held her aloft with the same ease as handling a rag doll. Her head rattled and her vision burst into spots as she clawed futilely at his fingers. His skin was like marble under her fingernails.

"Zuko, wait." She tried to say.

"Came to finish your rite?" Zuko's eyes were bright gold like his sister's, but lacking the same inscrutable gaze, burning hot with murderous intent. "You couldn't finish a wendigo so you thought you would come after us. You people are disgusting." Between his lips she could see the lengthening of his canines as he spoke, the bristling of the hair along his forearms as he squeezed her neck. His voice grew deeper and guttural, and Ty Lee watched in horror as the bridge of his nose began to contort and his forehead elongated. “I bet you weren't counting on a full strength werewolf.” He said through a mouthful of growing teeth, his claws erupting and his spine stretching.

His eyes widened when he saw the flash of metal under Ty Lee's jacket.

Zuko ducked just barely in time before the bullet buried itself in his skull. The sound of the blast tore through the forest and sent his left ear ringing and he clapped one hand to the side of his head as he screamed in pain and dropped Ty Lee back to her feet. The hunter knew she only had milliseconds before Zuko recovered enough to throw her to the ground again or rip her throat out. Werewolves had highly dense skeletons and with the wrong blow Ty Lee had an equal chance of injuring herself as well if she wasn’t careful. Locking her arms around his neck, Ty Lee struck the only part that was guaranteed to drop a werewolf, and drove her knee straight into his crotch.

This time he didn’t scream at all.

Zuko’s eyes bulged with barely contained agony as his claw-less grip left Ty Lee’s neck lifelessly. The only sound was a barely audible whine as his hands went to his groin when he crumpled limply to his knees. Still panting, and fighting against the onslaught of adrenaline screaming through her blood, Ty Lee forced the hand still clutching the revolver to lower the weapon from the boy’s head.

Before she could think of what to do next there was an unmistakable whistle of metal through the air as a flit of red fletching buried itself in the boy’s shoulder. Its presence seemed to surprise them both, Zuko’s perplexity doubling he reached back to pull the bloody dart from his shoulder-blade. The grimace on his face was short-lived when a companion dart swiftly lodged itself into his buttock. Whatever he had wanted to say disappeared with his slack-jawed look, his eyes lolling back into his skull as he dropped face-first to the ground.

Azula materialized like a noiseless phantom from the foliage at her brother’s back, her shoes hardly making a sound on the dead leaves and mud when she dropped down.

“I told that moron.” The girl said, slinging the rifle against her back. Pulling her phone from her pocket, Azula held it out irreverently towards her brother’s limp form, taking care to frame the dart still buried in Zuko’s backside. Ty Lee stared dumbly as the other girl waited for the shutter to go off before inspecting her work with a satisfactory grin. “Classic.” Azula cackled as the picture was presumably sent off to its intended recipient with a whoosh.

 “I’m impressed, hunter.” Azula said, turning to Ty Lee who crouched in the mud trying to catch her breath. The smugness was practically palpable. “Given your terrible aim I’m surprised you managed to hit something so small.”

“That was--” Ty Lee gasped, looking on as Azula knelt to pull the dart out from her brother’s rear end. “He was--” Zuko had been changing, or at least he had started to before Ty Lee had managed to free her revolver from its holster. She hadn’t seen anything like that before and it was the first concrete proof she had that substantiated her theories. Zuko had returned to his normal self, but it didn’t wash away the image of his separating skin and cracking bone, his teeth growing as long as her fingers. Ty Lee didn’t know what she had been expecting with lycanthropy, but undoubtedly a part of her had been hoping that she had been wrong about Azula and her family.

“Wolfsbane is a myth.” Azula (looking so very human) interrupted with a pristine smile, still without a single hair unkempt or a mote of dirt on her clothes. She knelt so that they were eye-level, her eyes flickered up and down Ty Lee's exhausted form. “All it does is make you smell like molding grass.” She said, crinkling her nose in distaste. Ty Lee couldn’t stop herself from flinching when Azula pushed aside the collar of her coat to find the red marks that Zuko had made when his fingernails had briefly elongated. Her fingers pressed in search of broken skin, passing over Ty Lee’s jugular, and the nape of her neck. Before Ty Lee could push Azula off uncomfortably, the werewolf pulled her hand away, appearing satisfied as she inspected the salve between her fingertips. She went on indelicately. “It’s also poisonous to humans.”

“What?” Ty Lee yelped. Leaping to her feet, she threw off her jacket and began to rub fervently at her skin with the cuff of her sleeve. Plunging into the brush for her pack, she came out with a bottle and wasted no time in pouring it down her neck. She was unprepared for the shock of the water that had been held in an aluminum bottle sitting in the frost all-day and gasped as it spilled down her spine. Even as she clenched her teeth to keep them from clacking she couldn't stop herself from shrieking when the wind blew through her sopped clothing. She dove around for the woolen blanket, bundling it around her torso desperately.

"How do you not know these things?" Azula asked seriously, taking in the other girl’s antics, unamused. She looked disbelieving, like she had been hoping that the extent of the hunter’s incompetence was a part of a tactful ploy. Ty Lee was starting to get used to how the girl never hid how she felt whenever she thought that the hunter had said or did something stupid.

The hunter blew out her cheeks in frustration. "Someone told me--" Where had Ming Lee gotten that idea? Not for the first time that day, Ty Lee started to fully appreciate how when it came to all the people who had guided her up until now, they really didn't know any more than she did. All that Ming Lee had been doing was just offering the same kind of information that that was in the old journals and Ty Lee had neglected to find. "Well,” She retorted. “Excuse me if I don't know how to wrestle wendigos with my bare hands or," Ty Lee made a gesture of frustration. "Make fire out of twigs or whatever!"

"Yeah, it's somewhat of a miracle that you managed to figure anything out on your own." Azula conceded distastefully. Standing up, she returned back to where her brother laid face-first in the mud. After a brief moment of consideration, she flipped him over onto his side before she approached the fallen tree that the boy had struck down, and disappeared after she vaulted over the giant trunk. Ty Lee could hear her voice growing faint as she went.

“Don’t expect cheap tricks to work if you’re up against a real werewolf.” Azula called. The haughtiness in her voice made it apparent just who she was referring to, as opposed to the sorry loser passed out on the ground. “The entire change takes barely a second to those who’ve mastered the transformation.”

After Azula had just saved her life (again), it seemed important that the girl know that Ty Lee hadn’t been here to kill anyone (any of them.) She remembered the woman in the van, and wondered again if maybe Azula and Zuko had more connections to the human world than she had given them credit for. It would have explained Azula’s unwillingness to deal with her and the manufactured artifices that had surrounded the girl.

Azula remerged shortly after with Ty Lee’s lost gun in one hand, and the rifle case in the other. In the woods near her home, Azula had an unmasked speed to her movements reminiscent of their first encounter when Ty Lee had found her as the monstrous beast enshrouded in the night. She was faster than even Zuko had been. Azula walked as if she were in a sped up movie frame, flickering effortlessly between the trees, speeding up and slowing back down to normal as she came back to where Ty Lee was, stopping so suddenly that the trails of her bangs waved.

“It’s not loaded.” Ty Lee explained. The blanket slipped from her shoulders, and she couldn’t stifle the shiver that ran through her. Her clothes clung to her body and staying out in the weather wasn’t doing her fast favors.

"I know." Azula said impassively, although she didn’t hand back the rifle. Ty Lee hadn’t so much as an ounce of silver on her, but instead of being pleased, Azula just appeared disappointed like she kept on expecting things from Ty Lee while the hunter kept letting her down. No matter how much she tried she couldn’t figure Azula out; she didn’t know what the other girl wanted from her. “If Zuko were capable of the most basic level of awareness he would have realized that.”

“I didn’t come to hurt anyone.” Ty Lee said honestly, the remembrance of how fast Azula had removed her mother to the house cutting the hunter deeply in an inexplicable way.

Azula looked like she wanted to say something a lot harsher than what came next. “I know that too.” There was an edge to her voice and Ty Lee knew that this was more than just a war between egos and the girl’s unhealthy obsession with hunter legacies. Azula had lost the sense of morbid humor that colored her usual prodding. For the first time, Ty Lee felt like she was being taken seriously for what she was instead of the fumbling novice that Azula had taken for—not because of whom her sisters were but because of the boy at her feet and the woman in the house down by the meadow--and Ty Lee mysteriously didn’t feel vindicated or powerful at all.

“Your mom…” Ty Lee suddenly felt dizzy, still breathless when the question left her. “Is she human?”

It was the wrong thing to ask, but she was more interested in how Azula would respond, knowing that even if the other girl looked ready to drop every inhibition she had in not throwing Ty Lee out from her lands, that she wouldn’t be able to resist an advantage when presented one. The reflexive disgust coloring Azula’s face gave Ty Lee her answer even without the pointed silence.

“Azula?” Looking up, Ty Lee saw the very subject of their conversation hobbling up the wooded knolls, having apparently followed the paths left by her children in their chase. She leaned heavily on a cane, moving ponderously as she hastened to where they stood, her face growing pallid as she moved towards Zuko’s prone body.

“He’s fine.” Azula informed clippedly as the woman dropped to her knees beside her son, cradling his head as she ran her hands over his face, brushing aside the leaves and twigs, searching his body for his pulse. “He’ll wake up soon, just get back in the house.” Azula repeated pressingly, bordering on being combative when she saw her mother glancing briefly to the stranger that stood apart from them.

As frail as the woman appeared to be, the older woman’s eyes were unwavering as she looked back to where her daughter stood above her. “Right. You’re right, of course.” She conceded with embarrassment, as if emerging from a confused daze.

She pulled herself up with the cane, stretching her hand out (tentatively, almost afraid) prompting Azula to jerk her chin sharply in avoidance of the woman’s touch. As if scalded, she pulled her hand away and curled her fingers into her palm. When the hunter listened quietly, Ty Lee could hear a question asked softly. “Did he hurt you?”

The very idea looked repulsive. “As if--”

Azula’s mother was looking at her again, her eyes narrowing through a second, probing glimpse that flitted up and down the hunter.

Up close, it was hard to not appreciate the differences.

The scribes had made great pains in replicating the approximate likenesses etched into the old manuscripts. Ty Lee herself had tried her hand at replicating their methodology in portraits and anatomical sketches to learn the physiology of werewolves, using Azula’s physique as a template but was perturbed to find that she had yet to stop being wrong about werewolves. If there was anything similar between the two of them, that part had long faded. Ty Lee could see under the lines of exhaustion and fatigue a woman who had aged before her time, but it was the warmth in her eyes that disarmed Ty Lee, who had come to expect only ferocity within the golden hue of werewolves. Her skin was ghostly pale, her frame almost emaciated. Although visibly frail, the older woman had sureness to her movements when she approached the young hunter. Stricken as the woman was, Ty Lee could see that she was still beautiful, possessing a timeless, ageless allure, and the girl wondered if this had been what the old hunters had meant when they spoke of the immortality of werewolves.

 The dismay melted and even though she was sure that they had never met, Ty Lee had the feeling that she was being recognized from somewhere. “You hadn’t told me you were bringing a friend to visit.”

“She was just leaving.” Azula’s frigid look was indomitable it seemed.

“Where are your manners?” Her mother chided with a frown. “The poor thing is soaked right through. The least you can do is invite her in.” She said innocuously to the visibly disgruntled werewolf.

“Oh, I’m alright.” Ty Lee said the same moment Azula sneered “why”. She knew exactly why she was making excuses, but didn’t know why all of a sudden she felt the need to keep up appearances, like it was perfectly natural for hunters and werewolves to shooting the breeze in the middle of nowhere here no one could hear one scream for miles around. “I wouldn’t want to impose.” She made a wilting, nervous smile, failing to be convincing as she thought of the other reasons to say no, a million reasons besides being lured into a werewolf den to an unwitting end.

“Nonsense, we would be delighted.” The older woman waved the platitude away with finality. “You’ll catch your death of cold no matter how giftedly strong you are. Ty Lee, was it?”

“Yes, thank you.” Ty Lee floundered inelegantly, suddenly struck dumb with the impossible probability that Azula had named her in a conversation with actual people (her actual family). “Uh.”

“Please just call me Ursa.” The woman said warmly. “Azula's told me so much about you, I feel like you're already family.”

Unsure of if the woman was making fun of her, Ty Lee glanced disbelievingly to the other girl, who ignored her and said instead, “Your sickness is making you senile, mother.”

Ursa gave a mischievous smile to Ty Lee, like she was sharing a secret, leaning forward and patting her lightly under her elbow. “Azula is easily embarrassed.” She said too loudly for her whisper to have been genuine. If she noticed her daughter’s mood turning lethal, it only amused her even more.

“Get back in the house!” The girl snarled.

Her mother went on, heedless to the violence of her daughter’s anger. “She can be even more impatient than her brother.” Ursa lamented, as if she thought Ty Lee could sympathize with her. “But I’m afraid she has a point. Being out here isn’t useful for either of us. Why don’t we warm up inside? I just received some wonderful orange pekoe that I think you’ll enjoy. I won’t take no for an answer.” The woman leaned in to place her hand on Ty Lee’s arm encouragingly and with such candor that Ty Lee felt that she could have forgotten the absurdity of the situation. She glanced hesitantly to Zuko, still lying on the wet ground and wondered what else she had yet to find before the day was over.

Noticing her agitation, Ursa chuckled good-naturedly, mistaking her concerns. “How kind of you, but I’m afraid my daughter is right. His self-control has always been lacking so this is somewhat of a familiar occurrence to us.” She said, smiling in a way that didn’t reach her eyes. “Azula, take care of Ty Lee’s things before you bring Zuko inside, hm?”

Azula looked like there were a million things she wanted to respond with and she didn’t know where to start.

“Your wheelchair--”

“Oh, I’m quite alright.” Ursa said firmly, already guiding Ty Lee gently by the arm and steering her towards the direction of the house. “I’m not yet completely infirm; It will do me some good to stretch my legs while I can.”

Wordlessly (stunned, and against the prudence that screamed inside her brain), Ty Lee let herself be led down the slopes and into the meadow, driven by purposeful. Looking over her shoulder for a brief moment, she found Azula staring back at her with a mute expression, devoid of its ire. The hotness had evaporated from her and the hunter could tell that the girl had been debating something within herself as she watched them leave. They were approaching the bottom of the hill and Ty Lee lost sight of her just as Azula knelt to throw her brother’s limp form over her shoulders, carrying him like a sack with one hand as she grabbed Ty Lee’s duffle with the other. There was the hushing whisper of foliage and Ty Lee knew Azula had disappeared into the woods again.

Ursa didn’t speak to her during their walk. The woman was leaning heavily on her cane again as they made their way to the house, her arm quivering with each alternating, bracing step. As they walked she found herself awkwardly following half a step behind, hovering her arm at the woman’s back apprehensively, not daring to make contact, but even more afraid that the woman would fall.

“I’m sorry for the mess,” Ursa said when they came to the door, reaching into her pocket for  the key. “I’m not very attentive when it comes to the house, and Zuko doesn’t clean up after himself as well as he should.”

Ty Lee wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, surely not anything filthy or squalid like the wendigo’s cave or a dilapidated crack shack that vampires tended to live in. Iroh wasn’t the most tidy when it came to shopkeepers, but that’s what he had Ty Lee for, and she shuddered to think how he had been faring before she came along. Maybe she had some notion of a shadowy, clammy lair, but before Ursa opened the door, Ty Lee realized that whatever idea she had, had not prepared her for its reality.

“Oh,” she muttered under her breath, wondering how high the roof went and if the windows stretched into the top of the forest along with the house. Instead of a floor, the ground of the living room was planted with soft grasses and small flowers, fed by the artificially made pond that flowed in under the glass wall. When Ursa flicked on the lights, the entire house had come bright with soft light from the lamps from the kitchen and the running fireplace that lit itself along a concrete wall. Floating stairs led up beyond a wooden beam ceiling, stretching higher with the trees to where Ty Lee imagined the rooms of the houses were.

The mess that Ursa had presumably been referring to was on the cutting board on the counter in the open kitchen. The massive slab of red meat sitting on the table with a cleaver still buried in its flesh was the only thing Ty Lee felt was familiar with the scenes painted by the old hunter journals. She tried her best not to look as bothered as she felt at the sight of the grisly block of meat that was in the half-finished process of being butchered.

“Please make yourself at home,” Ursa said, hanging up her coat in the closet. She nodded beyond the foyer, pointing with the end of her cane. “The guest bath is down the hall. It may be a bit sparse; I’m afraid we haven’t had as much friends over as we’d like lately.” She said regretfully. “You can leave your clothes in the hamper and we’ll see if we can’t get you some dry ones in the meantime.”

Ty Lee murmured her thanks, before she headed towards the opposite end of the house, the off-tempo echo of her cane disappearing with her.

Ty Lee waited until she heard the sound of the door closing before shrugging the blanket to the floor, crossing the well-groomed living room in wide strides to the kitchen.

The meat wasn’t human, the flesh was too red and Ty Lee knew that immediately, but this was her first time in a werewolf’s kitchen and scientific inquiries for the sake of humanity had to be made, or so she told herself. The hunks of steaks were as big as the width of her thigh, still faintly warm to the touch and fresh from slaughter. The cupboards didn’t yield anything out of the ordinary from cereal boxes, pasta, and cups. There were no knives missing from the magnet bar except for the cleaver on the counter, and although there were signs of someone having eaten recently, the stove range was still cold and none of the pots nor pans were out of place. When she came to the fridge she had the flash of a memory of when she was younger and her mother had taken her to investigate a case of mass hysteric somnambulists that led them to an industrial refrigerator filled with the corpses of human infants. It hadn’t been a very pleasurable growing-up experience and she irrationally hoped that something similar wouldn’t be repeated now.

“So much for that.” She shuddered, coming face-to-face with the severed head of an elk wrapped in plastic and sitting in coagulating blood.

The shudder than ran through her wasn’t entirely from disgust and still shivering faintly (feeling very much like the nosy snoop that she was) she went back to the foyer to collect her fallen blanket, wrapping it around herself again before heading towards where Ursa had directed her.

The guest room was in the southern-most corner of the house, and as Ursa had said, lacked any sign of having been occupied for a while. The bed looked like it had never been slept in. The towels, while clean, looked to never have been used before and the seal on the shampoo bottles were still intact.

It took an equal amount of time to figure out how to use the shower as it did to get over the fact that the guest bath of the house was larger than her apartment in the teahouse. When she turned on the taps, the water gushing from the ceiling faucets met her numb skin in generous, hot deluges. When the sting gradually faded, she couldn’t resist a moan as the water sluiced away dried mud and the cold left by the rain. The cuts that she had sustained from the scuffle with Zuko were already healed, and the tenderness in her neck had almost completely evaporated. The warmth of the shower felt heavenly, and she ended up spending so much time in it that when she came out her sodden clothes were long gone from the basket, replaced with a fresh set that waited on the guest bed.

She stared in puzzlement at the sweatpants and the slightly-too-large gym shirt, wondering if it was Zuko’s or Azula’s, and how badly either of them (both) wanted to kill her for being where she was. She couldn’t blame them; in retrospect, Azula’s behavior seemed to make sense for all of her terseness and rudeness. Hindsight was twenty-twenty and Ty Lee was ashamed that while Azula might have known all along what Ty Lee was, she herself hadn’t done a lot to make herself seem approachable.

Forgoing the effort to re-braid her hair, she pulled the shirt over her head and shuffled into the sweatpants. When she left the room still toweling her head, Ty Lee spied Ursa at the dining room with a tray of pots and cups, putting out small plates of wafers and sandwiches. Passing the kitchen, the hunter noticed that the monolithic slab of elk meat had been cleared away and the knife placed back on the cutlery bar.

“Ah, good.” Ursa smiled at Ty Lee’s arrival, placing down the water kettle and neatly capping the teapot. “I wasn’t sure if they would fit.” She lifted a selection of macarons from the tray and gestured to the seat next to herself. “Here, you must be hungry.”

Ty Lee accepted the accompanying cup of tea gratefully, warming her hands on the delicate china. Under the table, she looked at her feet, where she had rolled the cuffs of the pants up to keep them from dragging. It felt uncomfortable to be wearing these clothes, as it was strange to be inside Azula’s house and sitting at her table and talking to her mother and taking her hospitality. They felt like invasions, unexpected vulnerabilities that had never occurred to Ty Lee that might even exist, and reminded her of the moment when Azula had helped her mother at the car. She had a newly discovered shame for coming here in the first place.

“Thank you,” she murmured. The tea smelled divine and tasted like something Iroh had made her once. The sandwiches were as big as her forearm, and to keep herself from looking like a slavering animal, she stuck with the cookies instead.

“You have a beautiful house.” Ty Lee said, suddenly anxious about the clumsy silence that had fallen over them. “I didn’t think your kind lived in places like this.”

Ursa looked up curiously from her teacup. “I’m sorry?”

Ty Lee recognized the faux pas as soon as it left her mouth. “What I mean by that is—what I meant to say,” She was messing up her words and in an attempt to save herself, she took a chocolate wafer and shoved it into her mouth. Ursa reached across to pat her on the back when the girl had proceeded into fits of coughing. “Thank you for being so generous.” Ty Lee wheezed at last.

Ursa blinked at her, confounded, before busting into laughter. Ty Lee felt her face flush with embarrassment and she fumbled with her teacup awkwardly.

After a while, the woman sighed, pressing a napkin to the corners of her eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Even as Ursa said so, her gaze didn’t lose its scrutiny. Ty Lee had the same impression as she usually had when she was with Azula that she was being assessed, subtly dissected.  “Forty years, and you are the first hunter I’ve met as well. I think we are both in very similar situations.”

Ty Lee admitted sheepishly, “I thought werewolves were extinct.” It was surreal how just a few hours ago she had been so embarrassed to have thought otherwise, and now she was staring at nothing less except the thing itself, manifested from dead history.

Instead of laughing, the woman went quiet momentarily, pushing her empty cup away.

“We went into hiding.” Ursa’s brow furrowed, her voice falling contemplative, obviously torn on what she wanted to tell the young girl. “I’m sure you know the details surrounding that.” Darkness passed across her face, her tone falling hollow as she tried to summon a memory, one that wasn’t her own, that had been passed onto her through repetition and the glimpses of an old horror that she had seen in others. “We had to leave our old lives. We lived apart from each other, going into seclusion. Our numbers grew so few. We gave up on the rest of the world.” Despite the heaviness of her words, Ty Lee could have sworn that Ursa gave her a wink at the end. The mother was almost as enigmatic as the daughter. “Not me, I’m afraid.” Ursa said proudly, like she wanted Ty Lee to share in on some private victory.

Of course Ty Lee had always known their shared histories, and yet it had seemed so remote, so far away when she had read about it that she had never really understood it. It felt silly that she knew the exact histories, the numbers and the dates, but knew nothing about what it had meant. Her parents had always taught her the place in the world she was meant to assume, the great duty that was the burden of all hunters, the good that they were supposed to do, the people they were supposed to save. Until this point, Ty Lee had never given a thought to the totality of who she was.

Ty Lee swallowed. “Is that why you brought me here?”

“Of a sort.” A faint smile returned to Ursa’s lips, blooming with fondness, and for a moment Ty Lee thought that she had seen a measure of youth (a brightness) returning to the woman. “Azula knew from the moment she met you that you were special.”

Ty Lee grimaced. “I don’t think she meant that in a good way.”

Despite the optimism, there was a heaviness that ran the undercurrent of Ursa’s words, an oppressiveness that had followed their conversation, a terrible sadness that haunted the older woman that the hunter had previously mistaken for pensiveness. Ty Lee waited for her to go on but Ursa didn’t seem to have heard her. Instead, her fingers played along the delicate handle of her cup. The skin over the bones of her joints was thin and translucent, struck through with wiry tendon and dark veins, and there were slight tremors to her movements that rattled the porcelain whenever she lifted the cup to her lips. From the moment that she had spotted the woman coming out of the van, Ty Lee had been trying to piece together what Ming Lee had told her on the phone and the undying nature of werewolves. Looking at Ursa now, Ty Lee knew that there was no way that she would be able to ask, but the thought of that didn’t bother her as much as she thought it would. Surely there was so much more to hunting than just shooting the first thing that didn’t look human. There had to be more to being a hunter than chasing phantoms in the dark.

Ursa’s eyes had grown far away, her gaze floating over the ashen-green mountains and the gray skies. “Azula will be coming back soon,” she said thoughtfully, more to herself than to Ty Lee. “Maybe she’ll let us both know.” She wondered out loud, her hand had fallen to the cane that she had kept resting beside her, palming its carved handle as she lifted herself to her feet with effort. Ty Lee instinctively followed her up, but the woman waved her off before the young girl could come around the table to help her.

“Believe it or not, we have long admired the hunters for their traditions. It can’t be easy, sending your children to undertake a rite of passage by themselves.” The woman went on, moving to the opposite wall. It wasn’t steeped in glass, but instead cased from end to end with tall ornate shelves, each one shouldering tomes that rivaled any like Ty Lee had ever seen in even the most eclectic hunter libraries. She was sure she even recognized some of the compendiums from her parents’ collection back home. “You see, it just so happens that Azula has just begun her own.”

“I didn’t know werewolves had rites of passage.” Ty Lee wondered glumly if there was an end to the things she didn’t know.

Ursa paused when she came to a part in the stacks where the books grew thinner and the tomes were replaced with reams of paper bound with twine, stacked together in indistinguishable piles. She lifted through each other them, ostensibly looking for something as she pursed her lips. “Zuko told me that you had an agreement with Azula that she did not keep.” When she saw Ty Lee nodding with some hesitance, Ursa frowned. “I’m sorry. She doesn’t trust easily.” It sounded like a personal apology, and when she looked up and she saw Ursa, the woman had turned back to the shelves. “I had hoped by now she would have learned some honesty at least.”

“Because being honest with a hunter couldn’t possibly end badly.” A voice spoke suddenly at Ty Lee’s elbow. Nearly hitting herself on the table in surprise, the hunter startled when Azula unslung the rifle case from her shoulder and dropped it bodily into the girl’s lap.

The werewolf looked between Ty Lee’s hapless appearance and the woman standing patiently at the bookcase with her hands clasped over her cane. If Ursa gave a reply, Ty Lee couldn’t see it, but Azula turned back with a tight-lipped smile that the other girl guessed was supposed to be a form of politeness. “Aren’t hunters supposed to be busy, typically?”

“Azula.” Ursa’s voice cautioned, taking on an unmistakable rigidness. “Manners.” She reminded again.

“I was just trying to be helpful.” Azula said, holding one hand out illustratively towards the hunter, as if gesturing to the entirety of Ty Lee’s person could have shown the problem that she was referring to.

Any other time, Ty Lee was sure that she would have taken offense—any other time before today—but it was clear that while Azula might have anticipated the chain of revelations that had led to Ty Lee coming here, there were still things that remained sacred, and Zuko was still noticeably absent.

“Azula’s right.” Mindful of the other girl’s gaze narrowing at her as she stood up and slung the rifle bag over her back, offering a suitable reassuring smile. “I should be going; I have dinner shift at the teahouse.” She felt uncomfortable at the thought of what kind of conversation she would be having with her employer, and decided that being fired wasn’t the worst way a hunter could end a working relationship with a werewolf. She wasn’t however looking forward to shacking up in her mother’s trailer again. “Thank you for the shower. And the tea. And the clothes.”

“Oh, but you only just arrived.” Ursa frowned. “Please at least join us for dinner. We’re having elk stew.”

Ty Lee looked properly abashed. “Maybe another time.”

“Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out.” Azula said flippantly in the same way one would dismiss a servant, reaching across the table to pick up a fig from one of the many platters.

Her mother watched with a bemused expression, as if the thought only occurred just now to her. “Dear, the sun is setting. You don’t expect Ty Lee to be able to make her way down the mountain all by herself in the dark.”

“I don’t expect her to be able to do a lot of things.” Her daughter replied scathingly, having sat down and helped herself to a cup of tea. Running the edge of her spoon against the lip of the cup, Azula elegantly ignored Ty Lee’s look of outrage with a careful sip.

Azula could be as obstinate as she wanted but in the end Ursa was her mother and being so conferred certain powers, the entirety of which Ty Lee fully appreciated when to her amazement, Azula put the cup back down and pushed her chair back from the table.

“Fine.” Azula yanked the duffel back out of Ty Lee’s lap again and draped it over her shoulder. “But Zuko can be the one running up and down the mountain fixing the warding barriers she broke.” She jabbed viciously before whirling on her heel and stalking off.

“Of course, dear.” Ursa replied just before the front door slammed shut, picking the cup where Azula had left it and lifted it to her lips.

The rain had yet to relent. It was easy to tell from the water spattering on the high windows and washing down in sheets that it wasn’t going to for some time and the hunter was privately glad that her mother had pressed Azula to make the drive. True to what Ursa had warned, the light was dimming from the mountains and the hunter calculated that it wouldn’t be long before Iroh opened the teahouse. Ty Lee would have hurry to the shop as soon as she got back into town if she wanted to be on time.

Ursa waited to bid Ty Lee goodbye at the doorway, following the hunter to the porch as she watched her daughter disappear into the van and slammed the door shut.

“It can get very lonely up here for an old woman all by herself.” Ursa said, presenting a bag of Ty Lee’s newly washed and folded clothes. There was a mysterious weight to it, and a peek inside yielded small bundles of foil and the faint smell of cardamom. “Promise me you’ll visit again.”

Although Ursa remained cordial, Ty Lee could hear the seriousness in her tone, and wondered how Azula would feel about her taking up on the invitation, deciding that it would be better left after a careful conversation.

“Of course. Thank you again for everything.” Ty Lee promised, taking the woman’s hand awkwardly, trying to find the balance between delicate consideration and a firm politeness.

The hunter always got the impression that Ursa was smiling when she in fact wasn’t, and was sure by now that it had to have been a trait inherent in the women of the family. “Good luck, Ty Lee.”

It was a strange thing to say, and it made Ty Lee blush at the candor of its sincerity, her color deepening at the amusement that broke across Ursa’s face. “It was wonderful to have met you.” Ursa finished quietly, giving the hunter’s hand a last squeeze before pulling away.

Before Ty Lee could think of a reply, Azula rolled down the window, calling impatiently (angrily) for the other girl to hurry up, and anything that Ty Lee had wanted to say or ask disappeared with the last smile that Ursa gave her.

Ty Lee had barely just gotten into the passenger seat before Azula set the van into drive and pulled the car away. Ty Lee barely managed a wave in the side-view mirror as she watched the slim figure on the porch grow small, jostled back and forth in the glass pane as the van bounced along the beaten path until Azula took a turn and Ursa and the house disappeared into running trees.

The woods around Azula’s house looked different in daylight, or perhaps it was because this was a different part of the forest than Ty Lee had seen before. The plants grew tamer than it did in the foothills and the trees grew sparser, lacking the claustrophobic thickness. Eventually even the fog dispersed with the further they drove down the mountain, and Ty Lee could see the fingerings of feathering rain through the speckling of green and orange.  

When they reached the road leading down the mountain, Azula still hadn’t said a word; in fact, since Ty Lee had climbed into the car, Azula hadn’t so much as looked at her. All of the cruel humor that Ty Lee had known her for had vanished and all that was left was a laden silence.

They had just merged onto the highway when Ty Lee realized that the car wasn’t pitching wildly across lanes, and her hand wasn’t locked white-knuckled on the door handle. Somewhere in the back, the wheelchair was rattling with every bump in the road.

“Thanks for having me over at your house,” Ty Lee said eventually, deciding that this was a perfectly acceptable, non-offensive comment to make. She should have known better, of course, when Azula’s lips formed a hint of ridicule.

“That wasn’t my idea, was it?”

Taking the werewolf’s lack of complete aversion as a good sign, Ty Lee braved the notion that conversation wouldn’t be a bad idea if she wanted to mend rifts that she had unduly and hastily made. “So, I know we’re not exactly friends,” The muscle in Azula’s jaw visibly tightened as a speeding roadster cut them off with brake lights flashing, and the entire lane lurched. “But I was thinking that I was being unfair to you before.” She went on, neatly steadying herself as Azula came to sharp stop and prevailed heroically in not returning the proffered finger gesture.

“Obviously, you’re not,” Ty Lee made an obscure wave, missing the suspicious look made through narrowed eyes. “You know, a _monster_.” The hunter rolled her eyes as if she had just said something extremely obvious, as if all of her actions up until this point hadn’t been for the sole investigation of Azula’s humanity. “And I shouldn’t have said that, and I’m sorry for being terrible lately. It’s the stress, with everything going on, and it was wrong of me to take it out on you--”

“Will you just get to the point?” Azula’s eyes flashed impatiently as the entire highway came to a standstill.

She thought about the night on the mountain, the wendigo’s gnashing, bloody teeth, how small Azula had looked in comparison. Ty Lee had been too preoccupied with her failure to acknowledge how terrified she had been. She had been so caught up with the blows to her ego that she had forgotten Azula’s unhesitating resolution. Ty Lee remembered the shape of Azula’s back, the ripple of muscle as the young werewolf had wrestled against the wendigo’s demonic strength, and knew that if she ever wanted to ask, it would have to be now.

“I was thinking about the wendigo,” Ty Lee said, pulling her arm from the windowsill and sitting up straight. “Wendigos only eat humans.”

Azula made a sarcastic sound, easing the van to keep up with creeping traffic. “I’m so glad we got that straightened out.”

“But wendigos don’t stop eating, and there hasn’t been a murder here for years.” Ty Lee went on, hoping that Azula would understand. It had been bothering her forever, like with so many of the other things about this town that didn’t sit right with her. In the excitement of earth-shattering discoveries and the disappointment of her failed rite, Ty Lee had nearly forgotten the signs that had led her here, that there was something unsettling about the town whenever she cared to notice it. “The wendigo wasn’t from here, it came from some place else. It was drawn here by something.”

Azula’s expression remained as immovable as granite, but Ty Lee knew that the werewolf (with so much more at stake between the two of them) had given thought to it as well and knew exactly what she was talking about.

“There’s something here.” Ty Lee hoped that she sounded more assured than she felt. “Something big is going to happen soon, and I need your help in stopping it.”

After a brief pause, Azula surprised her by rolling her eyes at the road. “Sure.”

Ty Lee blinked. “Really?”

“No!” Azula retorted uproariously at the hunter’s dimwittedness. “What, do you think I enjoy being riddled full of rock-salt enough to repeat it?”

“That was an accident and it won’t happen again! Come on, we’ll make such a great team!” Ty Lee protested as her hands were pushed away from the other girl’s arm, knowing full well that she was more whining than bring up points of persuasion. “A hunter, and a _werewolf_ from extinction; it’s practically fate! We should work together on this! People could die without us!”

Somewhere in the traffic jam, an idling car engine sputtered, died, and tried valiantly to turn over. “I’m sorry, was that supposed to make me care?”

Ty Lee wasn’t speaking her language. Until this afternoon, she would have been at a loss, even without her knee-jerk revulsion at the genuine apathy for the lives of others. Until now, she wouldn’t have known the currency that Azula valued in this lurid, alien world.

“The less paranormal activity here the less chance other hunters will come in.” It had been her plan to finish her rite and to stake her claim on her first assignment as fast as possible, and it was embittering to know that any hunter traipsing through the area who managed to notice the whirling storm of demonic portents could claim the area and she would have to seek her rite elsewhere. She didn’t see the need to mention how she had told her family about the presence of werewolves (not when they hadn’t believed her in the first place) but it felt better to know that she wasn’t lying about the mutual benefit this could be. “You get to protect your family and I get to protect human lives. It’ll be a team effort, a win-win.”

Azula’s eyes never left the road, and she didn’t show anything that would have lent itself as agreement. Ty Lee didn’t think she would ever get used to that. The highway was beginning to thin out as the rain lifted, and they were soon ambling back through the fog towards downtown.

“We do this on my terms.” Azula eventually said, pointedly ignoring the hunter’s inane antics when Ty Lee clapped her hands together and veritably squealed before throwing herself wide-armed at Azula in glee. Shoving the hunter bodily back into her chair with her free hand, the werewolf speared a finger at the hunter with every point made. “You train every morning before school. The _second_ you’re not pulling your weight, I leave. This isn’t a team if I’m doing all the work.”

Ty Lee was aghast. “My training is amazing, alright. I beat my friend Suki on every performance evaluation since we were nine!”

“You charged a wendigo den.” Azula enunciated with monumental effort.

Ty Lee had to resist pouting outside the passenger window again. “Well, I guess refresher lessons are okay.”

This time when Azula dropped her off at the teahouse, there weren’t any flinging threats or gun cases, and Ty Lee stood on the curb for a while waving cheerily at the departing van (Azula had rolled the window shut in her face). Albeit this might not be where she had envisioned herself at this point, it felt like things were beginning to look up, and even with her unsuccessful rite of passage, she had least could continue her work in other capacities (research, recon, plenty of things really.)

She had found werewolves. It wasn’t something she could tell anyone about but it at least proved to herself that she knew what she was doing. Contrary to what her sisters believed, she could be good at this, and even Azula had said so (in her own way.) For the first time in her life, Ty Lee felt like she had what it took to be a hunter.


	6. Soon It Will Be Cold Enough (To Build Fires)

The stairs of the shop creaked with each step she climbed, each flimsy, aged floorboard dipping slightly under her footsteps as she climbed towards the attic. The morning was still new and the sun had barely begun to hurdle the mountains. The diffusing light bathed everything in an eerie blue incandescence, and the frost clinging thick to the windows hadn't yet melted. It felt like a place stopped in time, and Azula tried heroically to quiet the dizzying pace of her heart that thundered with each step.

Azula wasn't expecting anything extraordinary. She had been to the homes of hunters before (years ago, during a series of lessons her father had been trying to teach her about the importance of discretion) and the last time had been as unimpressive as the first, and yet neither seemed to compare to the cramped attic space that Ty Lee called a home. She already knew about the hunter's journey from her home across the continent, and that each hunter's rite was supposed to be taken under spartan austerity in a lesson of wits and humility, Iroh's arrangement for the girl to live in the attic, but the real thing felt so much more stark and depressing when the lock broke under Azula's firm twist of the door handle, and she crossed the threshold.

The room smelled like pine needles and earth tracked in from the forest. The walls were bare, except for the empty shelves and a bookcase that looked more like it was being used for storage rather than a place for books. There was a half-empty can of soup sitting on an electric hot plate had started to rot days ago, and the milk in the mini-fridge would be rancid in another day, despite the label saying that it was good for another two.

Azula perused the rest of the room, walking from one wall to the other like she was moving through a museum exhibit. A repurposed utility closet doubled as the kitchen and washroom, holding a dirty sink full of cups and plates below a shelf of toothpaste and soap. An old armchair with collapsed cushion springs sat next to the broken-down radiator. The dresser was canvassed with tubes of makeup and thin films of pigmented dust. Resisting her own curiosity, the werewolf pulled her hands away from the drawers, turning around and holding her back to the armoire as she stood over what little there was to Ty Lee's room.

To the hunter's credit, it didn't look like her quarters had the space to accommodate much to begin with. Boxes marked with black lettering lay stacked in the corners, waiting for homes that didn't exist, and the carton of pots and pans was especially doomed in an apartment that didn't even have a stove. While Azula hadn't been expecting an armory, she had expected more than just a shotgun hidden under a floorboard.

There was a moldy arm chair perched over a coffee table, and Azula struggled to remain upright when she sank into the chair and found that the springs had collapsed ages ago.

Azula flipped casually through a pile of magazines, her lip curling distastefully at the titles before stacking them to the side. Underneath the mess was an assortment of aged books splayed out in no discernable order, scoured with ancient writing and its aged pages crackling with the slightest touch. Unsurprisingly, each one seemed to be related somehow to the subject of werewolves, and the hunter had clearly intended a night of studious research before being witlessly sidelined. After some hesitation, Azula selected one of the thick volumes and opened to a page.

… _known for their insatiable bloodlust, the werewolf will devolve into an uncontrollable violent rage when cornered in battle, and hunters are advised to use the utmost caution as survival has rarely been documented. The werewolf is a beast of base instinct and and mind, of an unmatched brutish nature that is paralleled only by their insatiable desire for human flesh—_

Shutting the book in disgust, Azula dropped it back with its other counterparts, disgruntled to find that none of the others were any less ignorant than the first. Except for what was on the table, there weren't any other books in the room outside of textbooks and trashy paperbacks. If Ty Lee had a source she was getting her research materials from, it wasn't somewhere Azula could place at the moment.

The air buzzed insidiously, humming low in her ear, making the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. Noting the naked hardwood floor, Azula's experience told her to look up and she tilted her head at the ceiling to read the crude runes of a demon trap drawn in chalk and dried pig's blood. A glance to the window confirmed Azula's suspicions when she spied the line of salt at the windowsill.

"So you're not completely lacking any survival skills." Azula muttered to the sleeping figure bundled head to toe in blankets.

To the werewolf's endless aggravation, her announcement did little to stir the hunter from her dreams. Ty Lee slumbered obliviously, her face obscured by the sheets as she lied curled into the bed, the even drawing of her breath barely a whisper in the early morning quiet. The long crest of the sheets rising and falling, and the soft waves of brown hair spilling over the pillow were the only hints of the girl underneath.

Ursa had insisted on open discourse (advice coming from a woman who had never had an honest day in her life, which Azula was unafraid to point out to her mother venomously) and her father's disappearance to the alpine tundra had left her with nothing except for the barest of instructions. "You can join me again once you finish here." He had said then, the tone of his voice saying that he was done discussing this with her when he pushed her aside, throwing the last of his bags into the backseat and closing the door after him. She had pleaded until the moment of his departure, but the look he shot her through the window froze the words in her throat, and she watched his car disappear into the forest, remaining there and listening to it carry him further and further down the mountain, standing there long after Zuko had stormed back into the house, and Ursa had left her bedroom window.

When he didn't answer her phone calls, she knew that this was her last chance. (Heirs needed broad shoulders and she had never known her father to tolerate weakness. It wasn't the way of their people and certainly not the mark of a daughter worthy of carrying their history when he had passed Zuko over for less.)

Even if she had wanted to (try as she might) she wouldn't know how to begin to explain, and was how Azula found herself now, sitting on Ty Lee's armchair, her chin propped on the back of her hand as she watched the huntress sleep.

_What am I supposed to say?_

Seemingly in reply to her thoughts, Ty Lee made a small noise of contentment, pulling the blankets under her chin and rolling over so that Azula could see her face nuzzled into the pillow. Exposed to the pale blue morning light (wrapped in a bundle of threadbare sheets, burrowing for warmth) Ty Lee looked vulnerable in a way that the werewolf wasn't used to. For all of their brief and fraught interactions, Azula had come to associate the young hunter with the defiance in her eyes as much as the gleam of her shotgun's muzzle.

Azula frowned at her phone and noted that it was well past five o'clock, the appointed time that they had scheduled to meet in the start of their training sessions. When the hunter hadn't responded to her calls, Azula had made the drive to the teahouse with the express purpose of reminding Ty Lee of the consequences of wasting her time. She hadn't intended to end up in the girl's apartment, going through her things and spying on her as she slept, like some sort of slavering deviant.

But here she was, running over every minute detail of Ty Lee's bedroom, hungering for any part of Ty Lee that the apartment could yield, any glimpse into the girl's personality she could divine like shafts of light dying in the winter wood.

To their various degrees (her mother's open cajoling, Mai's unmitigated exasperation, her brother's depraved amusement in seeing her brought so low) it had been decided by everyone that the best course of action was to put everything on the table, which Azula vehemently opposed. It was easy for them to criticize when they had nothing on the line, when her brother and Mai couldn't even begin to understand the weight that she bore, and her mother's lot already long-lost as she never ceased to remind her daughter with every subdued, melancholic expression that touched her so frequently that she was dying. The world wasn't so simple as they made it out to be.

 _What am I supposed to tell you?_  Azula eyes traced over Ty Lee's sleeping face, her heart hammering a thousand beats like it had the very first time she saw her across the cafeteria when her world had crashed away, leaving her with a simple and agonizing truth. Azula's blood was screaming through her veins, an intoxicated fervor clawing from inside her skin, her entire body starving for the taste of Ty Lee's lips, her touch, and she swallowed the beast staunchly back down her throat before it could bubble to the surface, afraid that the hunter would awaken inopportunely and see the desire painted across her face. Yet Ty Lee continued to sleep, blissfully and happily under the covers, with such plain softness that Azula's eyes dropped back to the pile of journals and texts that glittered with illustrations of ancient, bloody wars.

It was absurd to think that for all of the horrors her father had prepared her for, it was love that would threaten to kill her, and a hunter's love by which Azula's life would hang in the balance.

In her grew a sickness, eating her from the inside out, slowly shredding each lash of restraint that she had spent her entire life cultivating. The beasts that slept inside them were ravenous, and she knew what Ursa didn't, that what afflicted them was not a gift, but a curse, and that if she did not succeed in this undertaking that it would kill her as surely (as slowly, as painfully) as it was killing her mother. If there was anything that could have been her cure, Azula was staring at it now, watching her dream.

And all the while her mother remained steadfast in trying to convince Azula to accept the serendipitous nature of their meeting.

For how closely they guarded their secrets to save themselves from the preyings of the hunters, there were so few among them left with the potency of the old bloodlines to maintain the ability to shift, much less to phase, much less to bond. Their aim for so long had been to survive, to pass on what was left of their once illustrious culture that had been their pride hundreds of years ago. They were bereft of any ambition, of any desire to improve their lot beyond what livings they could scrape out of the wildernesses of the world. Azula had envisioned differently, and under her father's guidance had endeavoured to make it so, to bring their people out of the shadows and to reclaim what had been rightfully theirs.

Her father had instructed her to be patient but the warning was needless. Of all the options available to her, the thought of revealing the darkest truths of her soul (of laying herself bare at Ty Lee's feet) was beyond what she was willing to do. She would rather die as the person she was than sacrifice any part of the person she was supposed to be.

Unable to bring herself to wake the girl, Azula relinquished herself to the confines of the armchair, purposefully taking one of the many magazines from the table and attempted to occupy herself with discovering the importance of finding the perfect pair of jeans. Soon she was back to paging through one of Ty Lee's stacks of rubber-band bound notes, thumbing through the curled bundles and tracing the feminine slopes of the girl's script. The corner of one of the papers caught her eye, and lifting it from its buried heap, Azula found her own image staring up at her, drawn in immaculate detail and practiced skill. The drawing was fiercely lifelike, rendered in strong lines of pitch ink over charcoal upon thick parchment used for the purposes of binding into books. All hunters were excellent artists it seemed (even the young and unpracticed ones) products of humanity's need to document everything for the sake of posterity. Azula had seen their type before, and knew better than to wish that Ty Lee's immaculate detail to the curve of her mouth (frustrated repetitions drawn over again) was anything except an attempt to unravel an age old myth.

Looking over the edge of the papers in her hand to the girl asleep on the bed, Azula was overcome with the feeling that she had lost something that had been apart of her. It wasn't very long ago when she imagined fate as a momentous glory. That she would eventually risk so much for so little was beyond her belief, that she might one day end up like her mother threatened to break every fibre that had been holding her together so tenuously. She had always acted upon the concrete and the proven, and how she would now throw them wholesale to the wind in order to feed the desperation inside her was disgusting.

She lifted her gaze to look out the window over Ty Lee's bed at the perpetual fog that rolled from the forests over the town, passing a haze over the streetlights and the waning blue hour. In the glass she found her own bloodshot eyes and sallow face staring back. On some days (depending on a multitude of other things that were somehow never in her control) she looked that much more haggard and worn, aged more than her sixteen years, a face no different than her mother's.

Zuko had told her once that control for him meant dragging himself on the edge of a razor, that the more time passed the more certain it became that he would fall apart.

 _Be patient_ , her father had told her once upon a time, when his confidence hadn't waned, when she had been strong, and the life had yet to start fleeing her veins. It seemed already like a lifetime ago, a life lived by some other girl with dreams and the power to make them all come true. In the morning calm, her voice replaced his wisdom, whispered into the weaves of her laced, white-knuckled fingers.  _Be patient_.

* * *

It was almost seven when Ty Lee was finally awake enough to pull herself from sleep, blinking blearily out the frost-laced window at the spears of light melting away the frost and fog. She groaned as she slipped an arm out to hit the snooze button, shivering in the cold as she simultaneously took out a stack of textbooks she had neglected to read over the weekend. The air in the attic was perpetually freezing, and it was always worse in the morning. She was that much more reluctant to leave the warmth of her bed.

Yawning widely, she rolled over to find the time, her blood freezing when she saw the slender dark-haired girl sitting at her armchair, barely an arm's-length away from the edge of her bed. Upon the hunter's apparent awakening, the werewolf's brow furrowed.

"You miss our appointed time." Azula said, looking up from the week-old newspaper only briefly to express her displeasure. "I'll let this go today, but if I have to come here again you can forget our arrangement." She stated calmly, the even tone of her voice undoubtedly supposed to convey indomitability and a measure of intimidation, but to Ty Lee just meant impudence. "Be ready in two minutes."

Azula folded the paper across across her lap, oblivious to Ty Lee's bewildered stare. The hunter had just become very aware that she wasn't wearing any pants under the sheets, nor a bra under her threadbare T-shirt, and how her breath was vaguely misting in the cold. She hurriedly gathered more blankets around her as she backpedaled to the other side of her bed as far as she could and started to pat around her.

"By the way, you make noises in your sleep." The werewolf said grimacing, sucking air through her teeth like she was trying to forget something painful. "Not sure you're aware of that."

The two books whizzing by her head were a surprise, but it turned out to be a feint for the desklamp that collided with her face. As the lamp broke across her forehead, Azula was distantly impressed by the hunter's strength in how fast Ty Lee was able to throw a brass fixture.

"GET OUT!" Ty Lee screamed.

* * *

Later downstairs Iroh placed a mountainous plate of ham, bacon, and sausages on the counter, shaking his head sympathetically at the girl glowering dangerously at the coffee that he had given earlier.

"I told you that wasn't going to be a good idea." He tutted as Azula dabbed at her forehead with a bag of frozen peas. "Young people need their privacy."

"Shut up, uncle." The werewolf grumbled churlishly, stabbing a fork into the pile of meat.

* * *

Mai didn't consider herself as someone easily surprised.

She imagined that it came with the territory, a side-effect of having followed Azula around for most of their lives that she knew so well how the other girl thought, and could (to the best of her skills and experience) gauge the unpredictable swells and ebbs of her behavior. Part of being the young werewolf's aide was knowing her schedule, and the other part was having whatever information was needed. Mai didn't seem to have either today when Ty Lee's dark muscle car pulled into the school parking lot fifteen minutes later than when Azula had told her, and Azula came out of the passenger's side, holding the side of her head. Whatever reason it was that they were late, Mai was glad that the parking lot was clearing out as the school waiting for morning bell so that the only people there to witness the two bickering girls were the groundskeeper and a straggling pack of first-years that shuffled by hurriedly as Azula glared at them. Mai's hazarded a guess that they had been fighting for some time, and that Ty Lee had just lost her patience as she looked to retort hotly to something Azula said, turning and leaving her standing by the car.

Mai pretended to look up from her phone and notice Ty Lee's presence for the first time, and just as the other girl was walking by, the hunter hesitated before turning to her sharply.

"Please teach her some boundaries." Ty Lee said with a tremendous amount of restraint.

Drawing from her own experience with Azula, that seemed reasonable. Mai nodded and Ty Lee brushed past her, disappearing into the hallways with a clang of the heavy doors.

Hunters were known for their extraordinary senses of hearing as well and Mai waited until she could see the back of Ty Lee's disappear into a wave of students just as the first bell rang before she turned to Azula, who appeared behind her.

Up close Mai could see the fading purple that had blossomed over Azula's eyebrow. The makeshift ice pack had helped with the swelling that by all rights should have disappeared almost as soon as it had happened. Mai didn't think that she had ever seen Azula bruise before, and the evidence of the other girl's fast-waning health made her uneasy. Ozai hadn't told her much (anything) when he tasked her with his daughter's well-being, but his command was as good as law to her clan, and if it meant putting up with Azula's stubborn, self-involved overconfidence to keep her alive, then that was her job.

"It's like you don't even care you're going to die." Mai had been unconvinced whenever Azula told her about the progress she was making with Ty Lee, but she didn't think that the werewolf could get any more pathetic. The jokes she had with Zuko at Azula's expense had somehow lost their usual appeal.

It was unfortunately for Azula's sake that there wasn't much left of their histories after the genocide. Unlike the hunters, the werewolves had considered writing anything down as a liability against their survival rather than an asset, and destroyed them all what remaining texts in their possession were regulated to the obscure and largely indecipherable. Ursa had been as much help as she could be, but as the saying went it was difficult for a fish to describe the waters they swam in, and the sad truth was knowing the exact prognosis was only half of a problem they couldn't solve.

The ability was thought to have all but disappeared with the waning of their bloodlines, before miraculously emerging in one of the few surviving noble lineages (that day hadn't been very auspicious either according to the way Mai's mother put it.) If it had to happen again, Mai supposed that it might as well happen to the daughter of the first, and while the elders made a point to use Azula as an example of the return of their strength, Mai recognized simple propaganda when she saw it, and the irony that the born and bred paragon of their people would never contribute to the furtherance of their future wasn't lost on her. The irony in that Azula might never live to see her own future, was less humorous.

"Don't be over-dramatic." Azula said, narrowing her eyes, and pulling her hand down from her throbbing head. By Mai's estimation the bruise would likely disappear by the time they got to their first class, and the less attention the better for them, especially in light of recent information. "I'm not going to die. I'm handling it." To emphasize her conviction, she tossed the bag of melting peas over her shoulder, which landed with a resounding thud into a trashbin ten yards away. Mai couldn't resist an incredulous scoff.

"That's a great start you've gotten off to." Mai evinced with a gesture to the door.

Azula flared dangerously. "It's  _her_. She's  _completely_  irresponsible! She doesn't take anything seriously! She's supposed to be one of the best hunters and all she cares about is cheerleading or makeup or-and all she does is sleep in! She's supposed to be on the vanguard protecting humanity from evil or whatever brainwashing scheme they tell their children-"

"First, I don't even want to know how you know her sleep schedule. And second," Truthfully as she thought about it she knew that there was considerably much more at issue here than just Azula's remarkable social failings. Much more than she could summarize in this small amount of time. "Whatever, forget it." Doubling as a bodyguard and a dating coach was not in her job description, even if Azula's life was on the line concerning both. Mai made a note to have at least one serious conversation concerning human social behavior; Azula might have literally been raised by wolves but that wasn't an excuse for every off-handed slight, and if Azula was going to make insults it might as well be the intended ones.

"What did you want?" There wasn't anyone around anymore. The second bell had rung, and Mai hated having to forge signatures on detention slips she never went to.

Mai held out the manila envelope that had been waiting in her hand, and the actual reason why she had waited all morning for her arrival. "Two more people transferred in today." She had spent much of the week trying to puzzle together why such a small school in the middle of the forest could have attracted that many transfer students from abroad, without a result that implied their demise.

Azula looked at the proffered envelope apprehensively before taking it and slitting the edge open with the sharp edge of a nail. Mai could see at once that the werewolf shared her thoughts grimly, flipping from one page to the next, her eyes racing down the documents' lines. "More hunters." Whoever had forged the papers had gone an excellent job; there wasn't anything in their transcripts, immigration documents, or visas that held them out to be any anyone else than what they claimed to be, two students from abroad, coincidentally from the same country as Ty Lee, the top of their classes but now had decided to move for reasons unknown. The trick to identifying hunters was knowing which details to look for, some sort of sponsorship or legal guardian from a overseas relative yet with no ties to the area, enrollment in the lunch program, a parking pass for a vehicle large enough to travel the continent in, inconsistent school attendance (Ty Lee had been the exception to a number of these, which had allowed her to fly under Mai's radar before her sudden appearance at the school.) The ones who were less shrewd sometimes had sealed juvenile records, or doctored papers. This pair of hunters had both.

"It's likely." Mai said, echoing her sentiments. "There's a chance they followed Ty Lee here." That was when she was being optimistic. There were more realistic explanations she favored.

Ty Lee's family was old and influential, and their daughters were feared across the world. Mai had warned Azula that it wasn't a far stretch to imagine that they held connections to fringe groups that were unafraid of going beyond protocol when they felt that it was needed. The problem with hunters was that beyond oaths and protocol, they had little else governing their actions.

"I don't know these names." Azula stated grimly. Every tribe leader knew the names and families of the prominent hunters, the most dangerous, the most decorated, their locations, their hunting behaviors, and their methods of operation, their ancestry and their progeny. As her father's second, Azula had been schooled at a very young age and had an almost exhaustive list that she knew easier than the back of her hand. But hunter families did not spring up overnight. The fact that Azula was unable to place them was cause for concern.

Mai had been way ahead of her. "Me neither." For all of their barbarism and zealotry, the hunters were an overly noble bunch of humans. Although it wasn't without precedent, to strike out the lineage of one of their own from their numbers in the neverending fight against hellspawn was no small matter. If these two were indeed hunters by blood then it would have to have been a grievous sin that expelled them from their order. The possibility meant a number of things had to be taken care of, not the least of which was the security of Azula's mother, and the forever-growing list of duties that kept adding to Mai's plate. A hunter that you didn't know was the hunter that was going to kill you.

Azula committed the information and the faces on the photographs to memory before sliding the papers back into the envelope and handing it back to Mai, who tucked it into her shoulder bag.

"So what do you want to do?"

One hunter was cause for worry, but three altogether warranted outright panic. In any other situation they would have left immediately, taken Ursa with them and absconded to the ancestral homelands. Mai still hadn't entirely ruled out the option, but going over Azula's head had dangerous consequences, even if done out of genuine concern.

All things considered, it was an incredible blessing for them that Ty Lee hadn't sounded in the cavalry at her first opportunity.

After a pause, Azula spoke again, her eyes glinting with the hints of a scheme forming. "Let's wait. We might as well see what they want." That wasn't the reaction she had been hoping for, and Mai didn't like that look and all that it implied. Azula might have been the master of guile and deception but a person who put those skills towards the friends around them often wound up having very little of them.

And Azula very desperately wanted Ty Lee to be more than just a friend.

Mai noted a second time that she needed to have a very serious discussion with Azula some time soon.

"I imagine they're here to hunt werewolves." Mai deadpanned. This town didn't have much else to offer in terms of the supernatural, unless one assumed that they were like Ty Lee and had come here in search of the symptoms without paying attention to the cause. Mai figured that it was just as well that Azula had managed to bond with the one hunter who was denser than a brick, and as long as the business finished itself soon then Mai couldn't care who it was. Azula's pheromones were screaming into the ether and everything within a two hundred mile radius was answering its call.

Azula sneered. "I meant from Ty Lee."

She was hoping to see her reaction, to see how she dealt with the newcomers, the assistance that she had asked for, and all the dark intentions that came with it. As determined and driven as Ty Lee seemed, the hunter was still untested, it would soon be time to see if she had it in her to make good on what she claimed to be. The encounter with the wendigo had been a sore disappointment to Azula, who had wanted (fate or not) to find a mate as strong as she was, someone who was worthy to run at her side, to rule the tribes with. Those dreams were all ashes now, but Mai could never understand Azula's pride; it was almost like it had been a horrible let down that Ty Lee hadn't tried to gun her down and skin her pelt for a trophy like her ancestors of old.

Yet she wasn't sure that Azula understood that the time for that was past now. With every passing day she could see the wildness growing in Azula's eyes.

"How long do you have?" Mai reminded, hoping that it didn't sound like death sentence.

Azula didn't like to talk about it with them, and getting responses was like pulling teeth. Ursa had taken years, almost a half a lifetime before her body had turned against her, but Azula had been bred to champion their people into a new age, to be their strongest, to exemplify the best in them, and possessing all of their strengths it was only natural that she felt their weaknesses even more. Zuko had not known his sister long enough to recognize the change, but Mai could see when she looked close enough Azula had already begun to wear thin at her edges.

"Enough." Azula replied, her voice hard as stone.

Against her better judgment, Mai had once nearly asked Azula what the feeling was like. It was one thing to study its effects through second-hand, outdated accounts, and the curiosity had nearly overwhelmed her. She often wondered what it would be like to look at Zuko the way Azula looked at Ty Lee when the hunter wasn't looking. "Enamored" wouldn't be the word she would use to describe it, but all the same Azula was spellbound and the change that took hold of her was something she would never master, not if she were given a thousand teachings from a hundred instructors and so it had fallen to Mai to be Azula's guide at an hour when she had no one else.

It was hard to witness Azula suffering so much for so little, all of her struggles in vain each time she was spurned (by a girl as fierce and proud as she was, an heir to a powerful legacy that dwarfed their own crippled one, a match in all ways imaginable.) Mai didn't know how to deal with the sudden helplessness that had overtaken Azula, at the same time hopeful and unsure, her usual extremism and callousness tempered by an awkward gentleness that came difficult to the young werewolf who had been trained more in ways to command the obedience of strong-willed girls than in ways to woo their heart. It hobbled her usual poise and grace, and Mai had never before seen Azula fumble for anything in her life, but she was struggling now for the right words to say, to display all the things she thought Ty Lee would be impressed by. It seemed beyond the werewolf that for all of her gifts, they were none that Ty Lee wanted.

Their years spent together allowed Azula to read Mai's expressionless face as easily as a book and what she found there made her disquiet, as if she could read every thought in the other girl's mind. They had years between them but they did not have closeness, and the moment held more intimacy than Azula would have liked.

"I'm going to class." Azula announced, moving suddenly with her books gathered at her hip, indicating that she didn't care if Mai followed.

Mai watched her go and briefly entertained the idea of going directly to Ty Lee herself before Azula was sure to make another clumsy misstep in her attempts at courting. For all of her obvious faults, the young hunter was young, and tender-hearted, and Azula didn't give her nearly enough credit. Later on, she reflected that it was purely for those traits that their lives had been saved.

* * *

When the second bell had run, Ty Lee was still making her way through the halls, hurrying to get to her morning chemistry class.

Her locker had jammed and it had taken every scrap of her remaining self control to not slam the door off its hinges. She was still furious over the incident with Azula at the teahouse (Azula hadn't even apologized and worse than that couldn't understand why Ty Lee was so angry) and she was afraid it was going to ruin her whole day if she didn't calm down and get away from her. It boiled her blood to know that Azula had spent the whole morning watching her, going through her things, and just  _looking_  at her whenever and  _however_  she pleased. Remembering it was making her angry again and her cheeks burned hotly.

She had stormed off without caring how it looked, and she had felt Mai's eyes on her the whole way. As puzzling as Azula was, Mai was even harder to read, and the two of them together made a pair of enigmatic phantoms that hounded every spare thought in Ty Lee's day. Even so, Mai had always been at least civil to her, as opposed to her counterpart who sneered and mocked, who appeared to find great pleasure in violating her privacy.

She was certain that Mai had some werewolf blood in her, but Ty Lee didn't want to speculate too much into it. If her family could see what she was doing now they would not have been pleased to say the least, and it wouldn't have changed anything anyways. She had decided her (lack of) course of action and everything else would just have to wait.

It might have been that they looked so uncomfortably human, but it never felt right that the divide between good and evil should be cut in a way that risked the safety and lives of innocents. Besides, werewolves weren't demonspawn. She told herself she wasn't breaking any hunter laws if she neglected to mention the werewolves again to her family (they hadn't believed her in the first place) since neither Azula's family nor anyone associated with them had actually harmed anyone (significantly anyway, Ty Lee thought with a wince, remembering the accidents both Azula and Zuko had between them and wondered if maybe with some coaching they could both improve.) Despite all of her ill-graces, working with Azula would have its advantages; she was sure of it. The important thing was to find the nexus of the demonic activity and to destroy it before anymore lives were lost.

Azula had imperiously decided that given Ty Lee's absence that morning that they would meet again after school in the parking lot before heading up the mountain. Hearing that had set Ty Lee off the first time, and they spent the entire drive to school fighting.

It occurred to her vaguely that she might have overreacted the second time. Azula's intentions were well-meaning, but even so if the girl ever hoped to live successfully in a human town then she needed to learn to get used to being refused. Azula might be used to getting her way, but the real world was different. Granted, the girl had a point about making obligations and deadlines, but it wasn't well-made when Azula never communicated anything and had taken it upon herself to break into her apartment and wait by her bedside like a serial killer.

She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't notice the boy when she turned a corner. When she moved swiftly to dodge him, he moved too, and they collided in a flurry of loose papers and textbooks.

"Sorry." Ty Lee apologized the same time he did, both of them scrabbling on their knees and patting around themselves frantically to sort out which belonged to whom.

"Are you alright?" The boy asked sheepishly with a smile that she did not see as she hurried to gather her fallen things.

"Yeah, thanks." Ty Lee was making sure that none of their things were being mixed up. She double checked to make sure that she had the right notebook (stuffed with pieces from hunter journals that she had been meaning to catch up on, her own drafts for her contributions that she had yet to start recording and binding.)

She had lost her statistics book and had given up all hope getting to her class on time. Which was just as well seeing as she had done neither the homework nor the reading. She figured that it was going to be one of those weeks where nothing got done and all of her weekends would be taken up with endless mounds of late assignments and readings. When she spied her book she reached for it the same time he did, and when their fingers brushed she looked up and found herself falling into deep blue eyes that gleamed warmly at her, and it was then that she noticed him fully.

If she had to guess she would have said that he couldn't have been much older than Zuko, definitely an older classman, but not someone that she had seen before around the school. He had a lean build, lightly muscled under his clothes, his arms strong and supple like a bow when he helped her back to her feet. His boyish face was beginning to square out at his jaw, and he had a thin beard that prickled on his chin from a neglectful night's care. The hair on the sides of his head was closely cut, and the long hair at the top of his head was collected in a short ponytail at the back.

"Uh." She said elegantly, and that made him smile wider. He had a grin that was lopsided and goofy, but subtly keen, like he was sharing in on a joke that only he knew the punchline to.

"I'm Sokka." The boy said helpfully, rousing the hunter from her dazed admiration. His voice was cool and smooth like water, and she couldn't help but be swept up and pulled beneath his assured, gentle poise.

"Ty Lee." She smiled.

* * *

Out of all the classes he had, Zuko hated P.E. the most.

It was boring, unchallenging, more a test of his restraint than of his physical abilities, and an abundant waste of time. It was an inane charade spent on the failing endeavour to convince the people around them that they belonged.

Humans had a habit of sweating abundantly, everything smelled, and the entire gymnasium was rank with the odor of damp socks and shoes and grimy gym clothes. He had never learned Azula's skill of muting her senses and he experienced everything a hundred times stronger than she did; for him it was all he could do to maintain his composure when his body exerted itself beyond a point. He didn't have the refinement that Azula possessed where she chose what aspect of her body she wished to change or not change.

He was still reeling from the day before, the lingering traces of sedative still coursing through his veins and sapping his muscles of nerve and strength. He would have to be extra careful today to not slip up and do something stupid, and in terms of chosen activities, it couldn't get much worse than dodgeball. It was a favorite of the gym teachers whenever the weather outside was too wet, none of them paying attention to the students' fervent wishes against it. As the remaining students trickled in, they gave disappointed groans at the crate of heavily inflated playground balls, and looked unsurely between his sister and himself. The fault had been his own; the last time the class played the game he had sent three of them to the nurses' office with bruises.

Faltering under their hushed whispers (every word discernable and ringing in his ears) he glared at his feet.

His sister stood next to him, rapidly dribbling one of the playground ball, and reading his mind.

"Cheer up, Zuzu, I'm told humans can sustain a small amount of internal bleeding without dying." Azula said breezily when she saw his reddening tinge around his cheeks. His neverending battles within himself only seemed to amuse her. She often liked to tell him that back in the homelands children as young as fourteen had control over their transformations, and here he was, eighteen and almost a grown man. She turned to Mai, who leaned her head in to hear something Azula said that made her usual irascible mask crack with a thin smile.

He didn't like it whenever they started whispering in tones that he couldn't hear. No one ever told him anything. It reminded him of who he was: an afterthought, a perpetual outsider of both worlds and doomed to occupy the spaces between, that he never truly fit in anywhere, that we could never belong beside that of his father and his sister. He had taught himself when he was younger to not mourn the circumstances in his life, but that didn't mean that he had to enjoy whenever Azula tried to irritate him for her entertainment.

The sound of a familiar voice chiming with laughter floated over them from the hallways. He smiled at the way Azula almost (just barely, hardly noticeable to someone who didn't know as he did about the habits she cloaked herself with) startled, and he swore that if they had been running in the mountains under starlight and the smell of earth and trees that her ears would have struck straight up. "Oh, look, it's your girlfriend."

Ty Lee had entered the gymnasium, lacking her typical accompanying pair of mooning classmates for once. She was talking to a boy that he didn't recognize, laughing at something that he had been saying as they walked through the door. Her eyes were bright and full of mirth, and the boy, relishing her laughter, was egged on to tell another joke. They could hear their conversation echoing through the rest of the gym, so that it didn't require any amount of supernatural hearing for their conversation to be heard.

"Oh my God Sokka you're so funny! Where do you get all that?" Ty Lee had a bright smile and even if it didn't show, Zuko was sure that it was causing Azula no end of aggravation that it was for someone as meaningless as an insignificant human boy. Personally Zuko didn't even think the jokes were all that funny, but you wouldn't know it by the way Ty Lee was eating up everything that was coming out of the guy's mouth.

"Kind of everywhere. My family used to travel a lot." He replied nonchalantly.

Ty Lee ooed appropriately and asked him where he had been to, and Sokka enthusiastically began to tell her about his previous adventure to the Altai mountain range with his sister. Ty Lee nodded throughout the story, evidently enraptured by his stories of fishing in snow-chilled rivers and ibex hunting in the Mongolian wilds. When she recounted how she had a sister as well who had spent time in Siberia, he appeared thoroughly impressed when she described the massive quarry that had been so difficult to track, and in the end asking if Ty Lee herself was perhaps an experienced outdoorsman herself.

Zuko wasn't the only one who noticed the happy atmosphere.

Azula had fallen dangerously quiet. She had stopped dribbling the ball and Zuko was afraid by the way it bulged grotesquely between her hands that it was going to pop.

"Hey didn't dad take you there last summer?" At the time the central Asian tribes had been experiencing some trouble across their borders and had asked for their help in moving across the desert. As their father's heir, the task had fallen to Azula to enter the wilderness to act on behalf of the ruling chieftain and Ozai never refused a chance to teach his progeny worldly lessons when he could. The scars over Zuko's eye still itched from time to time.

"Ty Lee looks like she likes traveling." He hoped he sounded encouraging instead of the brittle way his voice sounded in his ears and he was almost afraid that Azula was going to say something sarcastic in return. "Why don't you try talking to her about that?" Azula had been to almost every continent in the world and her passport would have put the whole school's to shame. If Ty Lee liked hearing about adventures, Azula had plenty. Having the goods was one thing, and selling them was something else entirely. He hoped that his sister would at least try to learn some conversational skills from the boy who was giving Azula a handed demonstration in proper socialization.

Even if she would never believe it, Zuko didn't really want Azula to fail. He had lived for so long knowing what became of that failure that he simply couldn't. He had lived his whole life knowing how it lived and breathed, had seen the poison it wrought, but his sister foreclosed the chance to even talk about it with anyone since she had figured out what it was. Whenever the subject was brought up she fiercely refused it, even with their mother. Their mother had called Ty Lee Azula's "chosen," and when his sister had heard that it veritably sent her in a rage that he had never seen before in her.

Her reply had been as furious as it was savage, as if in all of her anger it could have protected her, like she could have wielded it against her fate. "I did not  _choose_  anything."

At that moment it was Sokka's turn to laugh at something Ty Lee had said.

"Looks like you got some competition." Zuko turned to Mai with a smirk but she didn't smile back at him.

She was looking instead at the second person he didn't recognize, a girl who trailed in at the very end with the rest of the students as they crowded in from the doors. Zuko didn't recognize her but that wasn't unusual; he never bothered to familiarized himself with the rest of the students at the school (small as it was, Zuko never saw the point to it.) Like with Ty Lee's new friend, Zuko assumed that they belonged to another grade level or academic track and left it alone but Mai's fixed gaze gave him second thoughts.

"What is it?" He murmured close to Mai's ear, voice held low so that even a hunter's ear could not hear him, but she regarded him with the same distracted frigidness that she had when she first came into class.

"I'll tell you later."

When Zuko looked back he realized that the girl was staring back at him. Standing side by side with Sokka, it was easy to see a family resemblance. They shared the same slender build, brown hair, and the same eyes. The girl's was bright blue and piercing with brazen contempt that flashed for a brief second before disappearing beneath a polished veneer, and after a split second she was back to talking with another one of the student's about the upcoming dance at the end of fall. He thought that he imagined it, the product of a week's long worth of paranoia and drug-addled imagination, but he knew when he was being watched, and the way her eyes flittered between him and Azula from the corners of her eyes aggravated him.

 _What's her problem?_ He thought to himself, but before he could invest more thought into it, the gym teacher had announced himself with his whistle, gesturing widely with his fleshy tremulous arms for them all to gather around him. When it came time to the division of teams, Zuko could smell their nerves in the air. Humans had long memories, and even without his numerous episodes, it wasn't that long ago that Azula (their father's golden child, who had never before had an indiscretion, not a sin on her hands, a mark against the list of impossible laws that was held out for them, until that day) had smashed a girl's arm to smithereens over a perceived insult on the football pitch. When it came to winning, Azula didn't distinguish between teammates.

The portly man blew his whistle again and each student hesitantly walked up to the edges of their lines.

Yet Azula was uncharacteristically bereft of her usual boasting. "Don't lose." She commanded them.

Zuko spared her an incredulous glance. It was only a dodgeball game, and the size of his sister's ego never failed to astound him. "Ty Lee's not going to make that much of a difference." Ty Lee might have been the best hunter that they had ever seen (the best among ants, as Azula had put it) but she was still a fledgling by her people's standards and she was only one girl. They themselves had three among them, and Ty Lee only had herself, and it wasn't like any single one of them couldn't outrun, outmuscle the hunter on their worst of days.

When the whistle blew for the final time, it vaguely occurred to him that it was not in fact Ty Lee who was the first to reach the line of dodgeballs. Neither was it Azula who hadn't moved from where she stood.

Half a heartbeat later he was standing face to face with the same girl that had troubled him earlier, reviving every shred of dread that he had managed to suppress before. This time there was no mistaking the venom in those eyes and the hateful curl of her lip, and it rooted him where he was, his shock narrowly preventing him from ducking the thrown projectile. When the dodgeball whistled dangerously past his head, he knew exactly why Azula and Mai had been so intent on the pair when they had first seen them. Next to him, a boy screamed out in pain when he took a second dodgeball in the abdomen that had been meant for Azula, who had skirted out of the way at the last moment. Distantly, he heard Azula roaring in laughter, and Ty Lee's unheeded yelling.

Zuko's life really wasn't fair. No one ever told him anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be an illustrative chapter, showing how I chose to write Azula's "imprint," how it works, and perhaps providing more insight into her motivations. At the end of this chapter, I have basically introduced the full cast and while minor characters will show up in cameos, this is pretty much it in terms of main characters. Katara and Sokka's characterization is planned to be very radicalized, where I hope to write them as exacerbated versions of their canon personalities.


End file.
